The blue skies of Malibu
by Wiggle1980
Summary: Hans had everything...former NBA superstar, lots of money, famous friends and his own tv production company. Little did he know that a simple photoshoot for the animal rights organization PETA, together with the notorious young popstar Miley Cyrus, was about to change his life forever.
1. Return to the city of angels

**Return to the city of angels**

It felt great to be back in the city he considered to be his second home. Finally back to the sunshine and good weather in the middle of March after the never ending rain and freezing cold in Luxembourg. It has been a long day, a 12 hours flight with a 2,5 hours stopover in Switzerland…all in all, Hans had just arrived after an 18 hours journey, and adding to this came the time difference of a whopping 9 hours. The only thing he wanted to do now was order some Chinese food, take a shower, maybe watch a movie and go to sleep.

But first, he was inspecting the house, since he hasn't been here for about 6 months. Hans was a former NBA superstar, who had to end his career at the age of 32 due to a devastating knee injury. After 13 seasons, he was a 12x All Star, 6x All NBA First Team, 1x Regular Season MVP, and he was holding pretty much every record concerning Points, Assists, Steals and games played for his former franchise. Also in college, he was pretty successful, even if he only spent two years there. In his second year, he lead his team to the NCAA championship and was voted MOP (Most Outstanding player) of the Final Four, and also most valuable player of the regular season. He was considered being one of the top two European players of all time and a year ago, he was voted on position 24 on a list of the best players of all time. He was denied a higher rank because he stayed all his career, even though he had many offers from the big franchises, with the Orlando Magic. Since the Florida franchise was one of the smaller markets, he never got the same attention like Kobe Bryant, Lebron James or Shaquille O'Neal. And yet, he was more than happy and grateful for the career he had, even though he never managed to win an NBA championship.

After his career, he officially moved to LA, because he took over a production company. It firstly happened out of tax reasons, but meanwhile, his company made its way to being the most successful one when it came to movie production, so that nowadays, a lot of Hollywood's well known stars were part of his American circle of friends. Part of this circle where the likes of Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Downey Jr, Leonardo Di Caprio or Justin Timberlake. He also was one of the co-founders of one of the biggest internet companies in the world, and he made a lot of money when he sold his shares a couple of years ago.

Apart from the financial reasons, he just liked California better than Florida. The dry heat, the people, the cities, the beach, the Californian way of living…he still loved the city of Orlando and its people, he still owned a house there, but you have to say that he only spend 1-2 weeks a year in Disneytown. He spent the last 6 months in his homeland Luxembourg, working hard in rehab to strengthen his knee again. According to his doctors, he really managed to make a full recovery, and once this information got out, several title candidats started offering him contracts again to strengthen their roster for the upcoming playoffs. Hans knew though that he was mentally done with his career, and more importantly, he couldn't see himself ever wear a different jersey than the Orlando Magic one. The last offer he got came from the Golden State Warriors, the dominant team of the last 4 seasons, and had he signed that contract, it would have been almost certain that he would finally be able to get his ring. But deep inside, he knew that it just wouldn't feel right, and that's why, after a couple of days, he politely declined the offer.

After ordering his dinner for 7pm, he had about 90 minutes left before the delivery boy would knock at the door. He decided to take a bath instead of showering, and the plan was to finish the book he started to read during the flight, but in the end, he just enjoyed closing his eyes for a bit and thinking back at how lucky he was in younger years and how he became one of the richest people on this planet.

When he turned 16, he came to the States and joined a small high school in Orange County, California. On one side, to play basketball of course, on the other side, because his relationship with his parents wasn't the best. There was nobody to blame but himself, he was just a bit difficult as a young teenager. Being in a foreign country, thousands of miles away from home, something happened what couldn't be expected. He matured into a responsible young man and at the same time, his basketball talents seemed to explode. In the blink of an eye, he developed into a national phenomenon and he was considered to be one of the most talented young players worldwide. What changed his life forever though was the encounter of two young nerds in his junior year, the complete outsiders of his school.

Being a basketball player provided a lot of privileges. All of his teachers were eager to provide him the best grades without having to work too hard in the classroom. So, when it came down to a group project, he got placed together with the class geniuses. Being a 17 year old basketball star for his school, he was living in a nice house at the beach, provided by a former student who grew up to become a multi-millionaire. So he invited his 2 classmates for Thursday evening to work together on their project. When they rang at his door 3 days later, it appeared that the two of them had already finished all the work and only wanted to go over the couple of sentences he would have to say during the presentation next Monday…which he found very thoughtful of them.

The first thing that Hans noticed about them was how shy they were in his presence. He later found out that this was due to the constant mobbing they had to endure almost every day in school.

But having a lot of free time to their disposal now, Hans spontaneously asked them if they would like to stay for a while and play some video games, more precisely Borderlands, a first person shooter that could be played by up to four players in a split screen mode. In the beginning, the nerds were hesitating a bit, but in the end they agreed, and what happened over the next 3 hours left Hans with mixed feelings. Happy to see how Larry and Sergej started to open up, relax and become more comfortable in his presence, but he was also sad to know that these two so-called nerds were just like every other regular teen, they just never had the opportunity to be themselves, only because they weren't into the usual things like alcohol, party, sports and cars.

The next day was one of the rare occasions where Hans found the time to eat in the school canteen, and as soon as he entered the room, he could see what was going on. Larry and Sergej were sitting on their usual table in the corner, close by was a group of other students, consisting of the typical Californian jerks. Fancy clothes, rich parents, pretty girls you had to impress…always looking for an easy victim they could torture.

Once Hans got his tray with the food (for which he thanked the lady working behind the counter with a big smile, which seemed to be pretty unusual giving her happy face), he made his way to the corner table, just in time as it seemed.

"Now tell me, since when are such retards allowed to eat here? Shouldn't you be sitting outside with the…"

"Hey, what's up guys? Do you mind if I join you?" Hans interrupted the leader of the group. "We still have to discuss a couple of things about our group project". This was a straight lie, as their work couldn't get any more perfect.

„Hey, asshole, in case you didn't notice, but I was talking to this stupid bobble heads." Wow, either this bully was completely ignorant or just straight out stupid…

"Oh sorry, I didn't notice. But just go on, keep talking. I won't interrupt you anymore. Unless you're trying to harass my two friends here, then we might have a problem" he added in a threatening tone.

„Come on Chad, just let us leave" one of the girls tried to bring him to reason.

„Why? You think I'm scared, just because these stupid retards have enough people together for their threesome now?" he replied with an evil grin.

That's when the girl whispered a few words into Chad's ear (what kind of stupid name is that anyway?), and in the blink of an eye, Chad's arrogance was replaced by complete panic. Unlike the bully, the girl knew exactly who Hans was, and even if Chad didn't seem to be the brightest student of the school, he was pretty well aware of the fact that it would be suicidal to start a feud with the captain of the basketball team.

Trying to avoid losing all his dignity, he spat a couple of words towards Hans before he turned around and left with the rest of his group.

"Well well, there he goes. And I already thought we could make a couple of new friends" Hans said with a big grin in his face.

"Thank you. I was sure our lunch would be over again before it even started…"

„Oh, this happened already before?"

„Only like 4 times a week"

„If it's a good week"

"Man, I had no clue. Guess we'll have to eat together more often then. But I don't think they gonna bother you again. Something else, it may be a bit spontaneous, but you already have plans for tonight?"

„Not really no, maybe watch a movie or something, why?"

„We still have to finish our Borderlands session. To be honest, I really loved playing with you guys, so I thought we might keep it going?"

"Are you serious about this? There's no party you have to go to? Or maybe organize one to mock the nerds in front of everyone else?"

"Whoa, guys, take it easy…you really must have been through a lot. But don't worry, we have practice tomorrow and a game on Sunday, so we're not even allowed to go out and drink. I mean, come on, I really like you boys and I thought it could be cool. Let's just say 7pm at my place? I'll organize food and snacks, and you'll bring the drinks. No alcohol though, at least not for me.

„Ok, why not…?" Larry still wasn't convinced, but Hans could see that he was willing to give it a go.

Over the next months, the 3 of them became close friends, and after a while, Larry and Sergej also got to know the rest of the team. They became more confident, made new friends and there was no more sign of bullying. The Playstation nights became something like a tradition, and during one of these sessions, when they were stuck at a difficult level, Hans said out of the blue how convenient it would be if there were would exist a program where you could simply enter a question about this game, and the program would search the entire internet and present you the results. And, as a bonus, add the closest pizza delivery services.

He said this just out of frustration with no deeper meaning to it, but his two friends just looked at each other and whispered :"That's genius…". A few weeks later they showed him a first basic version of an internet searching machine, where you could enter some keywords, and this program would search the whole World Wide Web for results.

A couple of months later, after they all graduated high school, Hans moved on to the UCLA University working on his basketball career, whereas his friends made it to Stanford University, one of the best universities worldwide when it came to IT technologies. During prom night, they surprised Hans with a contract, making him the owner of 33% of the shares of a newly founded company. First, he wanted to decline their offer, because they became really close and he was just happy he was able to help them. But they wouldn't let go, so he finally signed the contract. 7 years later, Hans should finally find out why this meant so much to his friends. Since their company had an unbelievable success from the start, Larry and Sergej never finished university, but they were celebrated as the youngest honor graduates in the history of their high school. Of course, Hans was invited to the ceremony, and what Larry revealed during his speech left the NBA Superstar, for the first time in years, completely speechless.

„For a lot of you, high school will give you the best time and best memories you'll ever have in your life. But my speech is directed to all of you for who this time represents the complete opposite. For Sergej and me, high school wasn't about party, making new friends and endless summers. Hostilities, mobbing, physical abuse, there wasn't anything we didn't experience. More or less one and a half years before graduation, Sergej and me were assigned in a group project with one of the schools biggest sport stars…probably because, please don't take this in a bad way my old friend, he was supposed to get a good grade without having to work too much for it. So we prepared the presentation in a way he would just have to say a couple of easy sentences in order to get him his A grade. In the evening, we went to his home to show him our work and teach him his task. This would have taken about 2 minutes. What happened afterwards should change the rest of both our lives. We were sure that he, the star of our school, would just want to get rid of us as fast as possible, without thanking us for saving his ass. What he really did was inviting us to stay at his place and play video games since all the work was already done.

On the next day, we had to endure the usual mockery and teasing. Up to that moment that our new friend walked into the room and put himself between us and a group of 8 people. Next thing, he invited us, again, to his house, on a Friday evening. Can you imagine that this was the first time ever in our entire life, that someone invited us on a Friday night? After realizing that he was really serious about this, we were still hesitating to accept. Not because we didn't trust him, we knew right away what a great guy he was and that we could trust him. To this day, only our parents know the real reason why. On this said Friday evening, Sergej and I had planned to kill ourselves. First, we decided to postpone our suicide for a day. Why not just enjoy a last fun evening? One evening became two, a whole week, a month…and all of a sudden, high school was over. We had almost two wonderful years, found many new friends, mainly from the basketball team. We formed friendships that will last a lifetime. On the one hand, I'm telling you this to give courage to all of you who feel different, locked out, who have to go through hell every single day and think they can't bear it any longer. Let me tell you one thing. It will get better. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this month, maybe even not in this school. But in the end it will pay out to stay strong, to keep going, because one day there will be this moment that changes everything, that makes your life worth living again.

On the other hand, we finally wanted to show our friend, who's in the audience tonight, how much he influenced and changed our lives. Without any prejudices he was ready to give us a chance and to get to know us as the persons that we really were. He didn't only become our friend, but our protector and the big brother neither of us ever had. Without you, Hans, we would be lying somewhere in a cold grave, only missed by our parents. Moreover it was him who gave us the initial idea for the development of our search engine and foundation of our company. And after everything I just told you, there are only two things left for me to say. To those of you who think this school is an endless hellhole, let me beg you, stay strong, it's worth staying alive and to fight. And to our friend Hans, thank you for being there when we were in desperate need of a real friend. Thank you for saving our lives."

Hans sat in his chair, like he was frozen. He couldn't talk or move. Of the corners of his eyes, he could see how Larry's parents were looking over to him, with tears in their eyes. They knew this story now for several years, and finally they would be able to show their gratitude. Hans was very well aware that his two friends didn't really have an easy time in high school before he took them under his wings. But since they blossomed into confident young men and became more and more popular, he had no idea how bad it really was when he first met them.

After Larry was done with his speech and they met in a quiet corner, Hans gave a hug to his friends, and all he was able to say was :"Jesus, I had no idea."

"And you never should, but we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to show kids like us that it is worth to fight, to never give up. And we actually meant to tell you about this already a long time ago, but we never really knew how."

A few moments later, Larry's parents came around the corner, and while his father was still searching for words, his mother just wrapped her arms around Hans and after a couple of seconds, he was afraid that she would never let him go again.

Before it was time to say goodbye again, his friends wanted to have a word in privat with Hans.

"Listen, it's been a while now that you're almost begging us to take back your part of the shares, and we think we found the perfect solution. We won't just take your shares back like that, but we insist on paying you their actual market value. Furthermore, we want to keep you as a member of the board which would consist of the three of us. You would probably only be a pro forma member, but we absolutely want to keep you as our partner."

„Look guys, I know you mean well. And I will gladly accept to become a member of the board, but you know that you don't have to pay me anything. I was helping you because you're my friends, and I would do the same thing over and over again."

"And that's exactly why we want you to accept our offer. You earned it. Anyway, we already signed the check and deposited at your bank, you can't refuse anymore. By the way, here's a copy of it."

„If it really means that much to you, then I'll take your handful of dollars I guess" Hans replied with a grin, took the check, and his face turned pale and his heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

"You're kidding?" he shouted out in disbelief.

„One third of the shares according to the market price. In all seriousness."

In his hands, Hans was holding a check over 18 billion US dollars. His two friends were Larry Page and Sergej Brin, founder of Google and its parent company Alphabet, furthermore they were two of the richest people on the planet.

And this is the story how Hans too, became one of the richest men on Earth. Taking in account the revenue of his NBA career (salary and personal sponsors) and the money from his Google shares, his fortune was estimated at 18.4 billion US dollars, which put him on 31st position in the worldwide Forbes ranking. Add his good looks and his well-mannered character, you had to admit that this young man was…now that prince Harry finally got married…the most popular bachelor in the United States, if not in the entire world.

After finishing his dinner (the delivery boy was more than surprised that Hans ordered his food at such a cheap restaurant, but hey, better cheap and good than expensive and not tasty), he was thinking about the plan for the next days. Actually, he was supposed to be back in LA in about two months, but he was contacted by the Animal Protection Organization PETA, if he could imagine taking part in a campaign to support animal rights. Lots of other former or active sport stars like David Beckham, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Wayne Gretzky, Maria Sharapova or Lionel Messi already accepted to take part in it. The only thing that surprised Hans a bit was that he was supposed to be put on a poster together with Miley Cyrus. Miley was one of the most well-known and notorious young popstars in the world, but over the last 5 or 6 years, she was having a lot of reputation issues (mildly expressed). She started her career by playing the main part in the Disney sitcom Hannah Montana. This was so successful that they were producing movies and music albums with the main character that was played by Miley, who, as a consequence, became Americas Sweetheart. After reaching a certain age, she tried to get rid of this image, but in Hans opinion, she completely exaggerated. Glorification of drug abuse, fake friends, passing out at parties, provocations in public, affairs and nude pics etc, etc…Hans couldn't really say that he was looking forward to this shooting. But since he loved animals, it was out of question for him to cancel his participation. The shooting would be the day after tomorrow, so that he had one day left to get a good rest and settle in again.

Since Hans was a very social human being and he hadn't seen his American friends for more than 6 months, he invited some of them, Will Smith, David Beckham and Kobe Bryant to a barbecue evening. It actually seemed like a little wonder that they were all available, and it turned out to be a really nice and relax evening among friends, and if you wouldn't have known, you never guessed that these guys were famous superstars and (at least) multi-millionaires. But when it came to barbecue, all men were the same…it was all about meat and alcohol, sometimes their intelligence dropped to a frightening low level, and they didn't talk about anything but girls, sports and cars. Pretty boring, but you could make every male human being on this planet happy with it.

As the evening came to an end, Will was the only one staying (which wasn't surprising, due to the fact that he was Hans neighbor) and the inevitably talk about Hans future came up again, especially girlfriend and marriage. Somehow, Will seemed to be very determined to put him on the leash.

"So, tell me. No more liabilities, no more appointments, no more pressure…wouldn't that be the perfect time to settle down and start a family?"

"Oh come on Will. You know that I wanna enjoy life for a couple of years before I start looking for a partner. Definitely not before I'm 35. I mean, you did the same after you were done shooting The Prince of Bel Air."

"And that was the worst decision I ever made in my entire life. Trust me, if you would meet the right woman for you tomorrow, your plans of enjoying your single life would be gone in the blink of an eye" Will was teasing his friend.

"Haha, I'm just happy for now that this definitely won't happen" Hans replied with a laugh, having no idea how much the following day would turn his life around.


	2. An unforgettable photoshoot

**An unforgettable photoshoot**

On Wednesday morning, Hans had to get up pretty early, at least as far as he was concerned. At 09:30am, a driver was waiting for him at the entrance to his mansion, to drive him to the photoshoot. This would take place somewhere close to the top of the Hollywood Hills, in the private residence of a well-known movie director. Hans could have just walked over there, but since American people have to use a car even for the shortest distance, this thought didn't even cross the mind of the organizers.

Once he arrived at the huge villa on top of the Hollywood Hills, Hans had to admit that everything was very stylish decorated, just way too big for his own taste. It was owned by a certain Steven Spielberg, and the value was estimated at around 75 million USD. All of a sudden, Hans felt pretty humble with his small 16 million dollar mansion.

10 minutes later, he had introduced himself to everybody and the photographer briefed him about what would be expected from him, and what kind of pictures they wanted to use for their campaign. Since this time it was about putting the spotlight on the prominent supporters of this campaign, they should be photographed in a way that people would recognize them immediately. Hans in a basketball uniform, Miley in some kind of stage outfit.

After everything was discussed and set up, the only thing, or rather the only one missing, was Miley Cyrus herself. Quite amused, Hans thought for himself that this was probably the biggest difference between athletes and artists. As an athlete, you got drilled during your whole career to always be on time. For an artist, it sometimes seemed to be part of their performance to show up at least half an hour late.

Surprisingly, it turned out she was only 25 minutes late. And Hans had to admit that, on first sight, he was pretty impressed. Miley was dressed like a normal 24 year old girl, she didn't seem to be drunk or high, and she even didn't show any kind of attitude.

After the team presented itself to Miley and briefed her what would be expected from her, she and her manager came over to Hans.

„Mister Hansen, I have the pleasure to introduce you to Miss Miley Cyrus, your partner for this photoshoot."

"Jesus, why so formally?" asked Hans with a grin, "if we have to work together anyway, I hope I can just call you Miley?"

"I guess I can make an exception for you" Miley replied. This could have sounded somewhat arrogant, but she added a bright smile to this statement and greeted Hans with two kisses on the cheek. He realized a bit surprised that they felt really nice, additional to that, she was smelling really good, which was, according to a recent article that he read before the shooting, not always the case. He even liked the sound of her voice, although until now, he always had the opinion that her singing sounded a bit like Donald Duck, in reality though, it sounded friendly and warm.

"Maybe this turns out to be not that bad after all" Hans was thinking. And it really ended up being an amazing day. The two of them hit it off right from the start, and when Miley finally changed into her stage outfit, Hans didn't know what to say or where to look. She looked absolutely stunning and the chemistry was really great between them. During a short break, Miley's manager came over to Hans and jokingly said that she was thinking about making him a job offer. She never saw Miley being so calm, friendly, open and so easy to handle.

Hans surely wasn't completely innocent when it came to having affairs, during his basketball career he had some short-lived adventures with two Victoria Secret models and a very well-known young Hollywood actress. But he also wasn't the Casanova type of guy whose goal it was to seduce as many young women as he could. He was just the type of guy that women couldn't resist. Of course he was an NBA superstar, fairytale rich, but he also was, for such a wealthy and famous person, very humble and easy to handle. He was always friendly, charming, treated every person with respect, no matter if it was a famous actor like Will Smith or a waiter in a small family restaurant. He just had a shiny personality and people loved to be in his company, especially women. Last but not least, as a former professional athlete, he had a very well-shaped body and all in all you could say he was very good looking.

Miley though managed to put him completely out of his comfort zone, especially when they started taking the pictures that requested physical contact to get them done the right way. He couldn't remember the last time his body showed such a reaction to another human being. His heart was pumping, he savored every little touch and just enjoyed feeling her body against his.

What kept surprising him the most though was the fact how good they really got along. During every short break they were talking to each other, about why they took part in this campaign, what pets they had as children but also about their lives in general. Hans was really disappointed and also a bit sad when the shooting came to an end. Luckily, Miley suggested to have a late lunch together. They had been working for about 4 hours and didn't get anything to eat.

So they went together to an Italian restaurant that was located close to the Hollywood Hills, and Hans was only shortly upset that Miley's manager and some other crew members joined in, as the young pop star immediately sat down right next to him. It was a pretty well-known restaurant, and it didn't take long for Hans to find out that Miley was strictly vegetarian, but luckily didn't judge anyone who liked to eat meat.

During lunch, the two young stars were talking without a break, and Hans got to know a lot about Miley's life, from her beginnings as Hannah Montana all the way to recent times where she was trying to establish herself as a more grown up artist. On this occasion, her manager jumped in shortly to remind Miley that she shouldn't present this photoshoot in a too childish way on her Instagram. She also shouldn't forget that she was supposed to attend a trendy party later that night in LA and therefore not eat a lot now, so she wouldn't have to consume that much alcohol. Hans couldn't really believe what he just heard, but he didn't say anything cause it was none of his business. But he couldn't help but notice a certain sadness in Miley's voice when they were talking about her career after Hannah Montana, and he was wondering if this whole change of image was really her idea or rather the one of her management. But since it was the first time he ever met this girl, he decided to keep silent about it.

When this lunch approached its end, Hans gathered all his courage and asked Miley to exchange phone numbers, maybe they could stay in contact. Usually, he never had any problems asking girls for their number, but this time he was kind of amused when he realized that he hadn't been this anxious in years. Luckily, she immediately agreed, and after a warm farewell hug, he didn't call a cab but really walked home on his own feet which took him about 30 minutes.

Over the next days, he couldn't stop thinking about the photoshoot and lunch, and he couldn't deny that he wanted to see this brat (or at least that was what he was thinking before meeting her) again, no matter what. He desperately thought about different scenarios that would give him a reason to write her a message, when suddenly his smartphone vibrated and he received a Whats App message from Miley. Surprised, he opened the message, and what he was reading instantly brightened his day.

„Hi there, I hope you were able to recover from having to spend the day with me? I just wanted to ask if you might feel like going to Bungalows tonight? I'm going to attend a party there, would be cool to hang out again."

Hans usually wasn't too keen on going to parties, Vegas was the only exception, he somehow loved this city with all its crazy possibilities to have a good time…he smilingly thought about a whole weekend that cost him about 200.000$...and he didn't regret having spent a single one of them. But if this gave him the opportunity to see Miley again, he was more than willing to give it a shot. He still made sure to have a plan B, just in case their second meeting would turn out to be a complete disaster, and contacted a couple of friends to see if they might be interested in jumping in, and he really found a couple who were planning on going there anyway. Nowadays, when Hans pictured a perfect night out, he was rather thinking about something like the barbecue he was having last night with his friends, going to a restaurant and a movie afterwards, or maybe just spending time with friends and family. Nevertheless, he was smiling when he texted her back:

"It took me a couple of days, but I have. And, sure, why not? It's been a while since I last plunged into LA's nightlife, would be about time again."

Since he still had a couple of hours left, he invited his friends for dinner, so they could show up at the club together. He also contacted the manager of the Bungalows, so that he was put on the VIP guest list, one of the many advantages that came with fame and wealth. What also worked to his favor was the fact that America loved Cinderella stories like his. Coming from Europe as an unknown teenager, working his way up to one of the nation's most hyped young basketball talents, accepting to play for a small college that he led to a national championship, and stayed loyal to the franchise that drafted him for his entire career, the Orlando Magic. He also never produced any scandals, and people were just happy to see how grateful he was for the life that the United States offered to him. These were some of the reasons why his fans loved him and were just happy whenever he showed up. Of course you didn't make it to the top, self-made billionaire and NBA superstar, without using your elbows from time to time, but unlike a lot of people, he only did this when it was absolutely necessary, and when it came to helping friends or employees, he was always more than willing to do what he could. In other words, America loved this young man who was born in one of the smallest countries in the world.


	3. An unpleasant night out

**An unpleasant night out**

Later that evening, when Hans and his friends arrived at the club, he was first taking a couple of drinks with them before he started to look for Miley (he didn't want to seem too desperate). The Bungalows was one of the few nightclubs that he really liked. It wasn't the typical overcrowded one or two room club with the music playing so loud that you couldn't have a proper conversation with anyone. It looked more like a cottage in the countryside, with an open space on every site and in between was the house with different rooms. Living room, billiard room, library, dinner room and a couple of bars with enough seating possibilities to sit down with your friends and have a conversation, you even had some ping pong tables outside.

When he finally found her, he immediately had a bad feeling. Miley was together with her notorious girl gang, consisting of Paris Hilton, Amanda Bines and Lindsay Lohan. Since he was trying to get some information about Miley over the last days, he read a lot about these girls. They produced scandals on a weekly basis (at least) and Hans was sure that they were not really Miley's friends, but only spent time with her to get into the spotlight of the media. Because wherever Miley showed up, the paparazzi would be waiting for her.

Miley seemed to be pretty drunk already, at least she didn't have full control of her movements anymore. Since Hans was already here, he didn't want to sneak away like a coward, so he went over to the group. Miley saw him coming and yelled at him:

"There you are, so the party can finally start"

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth. Hans had to think back to the kisses he got a few days ago at the photoshoot, and, even though this one was one the mouth and not on the cheeks, it felt completely different. Miley's breath smelled like a mixture of alcohol, weed, sweat and nicotine, which was a pretty filthy combination. The other girls immediately jumped in and he was forced to have a drink with them, afterwards it was mainly Paris Hilton who became very clingy. She wanted to know everything about his personal life, touched him every time she could and tried to take as many pictures as possible. Hans was pretty sure that it wouldn't take long before they would be, according to Paris's Instagram account, best friends or even madly in love.

30 minutes later, he finally got the opportunity to talk to Miley, but that didn't really brighten his mood.

"God, are your friends always so annoying?"

"Annoying? Why annoying? They're just not as boring as you are"

„Oh sorry, my bad. That might be an explanation why I don't like them"

„Come on, what do you think, you wanna have some real fun? We could go to the bathroom to sniff a line" she suddenly whispered in his ear.

„Are you fucking serious? Are you really offering me to consume some cocaine?" Hans replied completely shocked. This night definitely didn't develop the way he hoped it would.

"Cooooome on, don't be such a pussy. I'm sure we can have some more fun afterwards. We could ask Paris to join us, I saw that you seem to like each other" she said and pressed her hips against Hans, trying to seduce him, but all she managed to do was to freak him out.

„No thanks, but I think I'll pass. I better get going…". He looked at this young girl with some sort of disgust and left the room. All he could hear was Miley shouting at him:

"So go back to your boring friends you loser. We'll find someone who knows how to have fun." The last thing he heard was the mocking laughter of Miley's so-called friends.

Hans went outside, ordered a drink and was looking for a quiet corner where he wouldn't be disturbed. He didn't mind that Paris and her friends were making fun of him, as he usually didn't give a damn about the opinion of people he had no respect for. He was just shocked at how he could completely misjudge Miley. After the photoshoot, he really thought of her as an amazing young woman, who was misperceived by the media and the public. But it seemed like today, he met the real Miley Cyrus and she just wasn't the girl he met a few days ago.

He stayed in his corner for a bit, enjoying his drink and figuring out that this was something like a sign he couldn't ignore. For the first time, he was completely astonished by a girl on their first meeting, just to be brutally disappointed shortly afterwards. He had to admit to himself that it kind of hurt him how she treated him. She mocked him, even tried to humiliate him in front of other people, and he came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to just forget about this girl.

Just when he finished his drink and was about to tell his friends that he would be heading back home, Miley came around the corner.

„Hey, here you are. What's the matter, you don't feel like partying anymore?"

„Seriously? After what happened inside? No thanks, I definitely don't feel like partying anymore."

„Oh come on, don't be a jerk. Just come back in and have some fun with us."

"Thanks, but I'll pass. To be honest, I imagined this night out a bit differently. I thought you would actually be more like that girl I met on Wednesday."

„What do you mean? Nice, innocent, boring? I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that's not me. The problem on Wednesday was that I wasn't either drunk nor high, that's why I was such a nit."

"And that's your honest opinion about it? Somehow I don't buy that…"

"Really? Why not?"

"I don't know. Maybe because I just can't imagine that the Miley I met is stupid enough to consider this girls inside being her best friends."

„Sorry to disappoint you again. But we're just having fun and hang out together. Besides, they are also young and famous, so they understand what I have to go through and they support me no matter what. Something I probably can't expect from you."

"You really don't get it, do you? You think they are your friends? All they do is using you to get some attention. You're their only possibility to appear on the first page, and the more scandalous, the better. As soon as they don't need you anymore, they drop you faster than you can say bong."

„Haha, bong, that was funny"

„I'm happy you like it"

„Ok, listen. I really liked you on Wednesday, but I am not the sweet, little Miley that everybody expects me to be. I love to party, smoke weed and get drunk. And if I want to have some fun with guys, I just do it. But you don't seem to be interested."

„You know, and that's exactly where you lie to yourself. Maybe you're not the sweet Miley who never does anything wild or wrong, nobody can be that perfect. But I'm damn sure that you're not that bitch you turn into when you're together with your so-called friends. All you try to do is to get away from this Hannah image, and you don't even notice that you're losing yourself on the way." This little outburst really seemed to somehow reach the young girl. All of a sudden, she got a distant look in her eyes, and she replied in a deeply sad voice:

"It might be true that I exaggerate sometimes. But it's about time to get rid of Hannah and grow up. And it might take some extreme measures to do so, otherwise I will always only be this little cute girl. But I want people to recognize me as a grown up woman and artist. And changing my environment and my circle of friends is part of that. If I don't do this, I will always only be Miley in the eyes of everybody."

"Only Miley…what's so bad about being only Miley?"

„Because Miley is just a little boring girl, not taken seriously by anyone"

„Haha, and who told you that? After all, this Miley is someone who was loved and admired by millions of children. And honestly, what more could you ask for?"

This was something Miley didn't have an answer to, but Hans could see in her face that these crappy thoughts were mainly a production of her new friends and, sadly, when he was thinking about the lunch they had after the photoshoot, probably also a strategy of her management.

„Look, before I leave, there's only one more thing I want to tell you. You said that the Miley from Wednesday was just a boring and innocent version of the person you really are. To me though, the Miley I got to know back there was a young woman who enjoyed life, just an open-minded and loveable girl. And by the way the most beautiful woman I have ever met in my entire life. This boring person impressed me like nobody else ever did before. And my honest opinion is, this was only possible because that was the one and only real Miley. This Miley was a person that touched my heart, and I couldn't stop thinking about her. And I really don't know if I've ever been as happy as in that moment where this person asked me if I would like to see her again today. And yes, it fucking hurts to realize that my image of her seems to have been completely wrong."

After this conversation, he left the young singer and made his way back home. Somehow, this evening didn't turn out like planned at all.


	4. A Second Chance

**A second chance**

The following day, Hans was still disappointed, and he couldn't find any motivation to do anything productive during daytime. It wasn't until the early evening hours, when Will called him over to talk about an eventual movie project that he was able to get himself going. This time, they met at Will's house, since his wife and kids were spending some time in Europe. Hans actually loved working with Will. He was extremely talented, professional and, which was very important, they could tell each other openly what they were thinking about the project or script, without having to worry it would affect their friendship. But this time, there wasn't any risk at all anyway, since both of them were amazed by the story of the movie, and so it only took about half an hour before they agreed on Will playing the main character, as long as Hans company would take care of the finances and production part.

"Ok, now we got this over with, I'm gonna get us the good whiskey, pour us a glas, and then you gonna tell me what's wrong with you" Will said in an unexpectedly serious tone.

"Why, what should be wrong?" Hans answered frustrated.

"Come on. No smile, no stupid jokes, no good mood, that's so not you, something has to be up. Like I said, you got about two minutes to run or you chose option B and tell me everything" After these words, Will got up from his chair and went inside to get the Whiskey.

Shortly after, he came back with an 85 year old bottle, filled two glasses and said:

"Since you didn't run and you're still here…tell me"

"It's really that obvious?"

"It is"

"Actually, it's all your fault" Hans told him with a cheeky grin.

"Ok, wow, now I'm really curious"

„You remember last Tuesday? When will you finally start a serious relationship, just wait till the right one crosses your path, bla bla bla…"

"Jesus, this can't end well…" Will replied smiling.

"True. The day after, I was having this PETA-shooting, together with Miley Cyrus. And, don't dare to start laughing now, but yes, only one day after your little speech, I really thought I might have met that person. Beautiful, lovely, smart, same interests…everything seemed to be perfect, to the point that we agreed on meeting on a party yesterday evening. And there, everything that could go wrong went wrong. In short words, she transformed exactly into that person you always hear about in the media. Drunk, stoned, arrogant and stupid. Let's say, the evening ended with me giving her a lecture about life and just left her there."

„See, I don't really know Miley, she's not my generation anymore. But what I can guess from press articles and so on is, that she's an incredibly talented young woman, who's about the crash her life full speed into a concrete wall. She seems to be in a similar phase than I was after the Fresh Prince came to an end. Enjoy your life, be cool, create a new image about yourself and, very important,

gather the wrong people around you. What saved me back in the time and let me get back on my feet was meeting Jada. So, if you really want my advice, you have 2 options now. If you're not sure that she's the one for you, stay away from her as far as possible, otherwise she can drag you into the abyss. But if you're convinced that she's something special, don't give up on her. I know you gonna deny it again, but you're one of the strongest persons I have ever met. You don't let anyone taking advantage of you, and you have no problems banning people from your life you know are bad or have a bad influence on you, which means you might be the only person in her surroundings that can pull her out of her misery. Trust me, I can tell from my own experience, despite being a superstar, being rich and having millions of people that admire her and envy her richness and stardom, she might be the loneliest girl in Hollywood, if not in the entire US. The most important is tough, don't play with her. If you're just looking to have some fun, look for someone else, cause that might destroy her completely."

Later at home, he couldn't get this conversation out of his head. Again and again, he was asking himself the next day if this little girl really could mean so much to him, that he was ready to put all his efforts into dragging her out of this swamp of parties, alcohol, drugs and false friends, without any guarantee that he would succeed. But the more he thought about it, the more obvious it became that he wouldn't be able to forget about Miley. And Will was right, if he wouldn't try at least, he would ask himself for the rest of his life…what if? And he never was a big fan of that.

The only question left was, how to start? He would need a good reason to get in contact with Miley again, and ideally, arrange a meeting, only the two of them, no friends and no distractions. And just as if it was meant to be, just like last time when he didn't know how to text Miley, he got a message from her, and this time a pretty long one, with a, admittedly, surprising content:

"Hey, I just wanted to check if you're doing well? I don't really know how to begin because I'm really not good at apologizing to other people, but I wanted to try at least. I'm really sorry about how things turned out last weekend, especially my behavior towards you. You know, I really had to think a lot about everything you had to tell me, and I'm afraid that you were right with pretty much everything, especially when it comes to surrounding myself with the wrong people. Strangely, your accusations are pretty similar to those my father made, only that I blocked him off completely.

What I'm actually trying to say is, I also really enjoyed our shooting and the time we spent together afterwards, but I can absolutely understand if you're just fed up with me and don't want to see me anymore. All I want you to know is that I'm truly sorry, and in the end, you were right with everything you said. Somewhere along the way, I've lost myself, and I have no idea how to get back on my feet"

Hans expected a lot of things to happen, but definitely not getting that kind of text from Miley. Especially that last sentence contained such an amount of desperation and sadness, that he felt the urge to drive to her home and put his arms around her. But well, he didn't even know where she lived. But his mind was slowly starting to build up a plan that might help him get her life back on track, maybe even a little more than that. So he didn't hesitate for long and texted her back:

"You know how they say. Insight is the first step to improvement . But seriously, I really appreciate your apology, that takes a lot of courage, and to be honest, I didn't really expect this. And even though that evening didn't go as planned, at least for me, if it made you question some of your choices, it wasn't completely in vain. And, about being fed up with you…let's say, it seems like I haven't learned my lesson yet. If you're free tonight, I would love to get another chance to see you. Under the condition that I can do the planning".

"Really? That's a surprise, but I would be really happy if you gave me a second chance. Even if it's just to show you I'm not always the person I was last Saturday. But you might have to tell me where we go. So I can think about my outfit, which depends on the club we gonna go to".

"Haha, don't worry about that. I'd say, shorts, t-shirt, maybe a sweater for later. The place I plan to take you is as different from a night club as it could be. What time would be fine for you? I could pick you up earliest at 6pm".

„Sounds perfect, I don't have any appointments today or tomorrow. So 6pm. And thank you for giving me this second chance".

„No problem. I'll see you later"

This turn of events was a bit unexpected, to say the least, but Hans couldn't deny the fact that he was happy about it. He was just curious if this change of attitude would last or if it was just a short flash in the pan. Since Will was going through a similar phase like Miley, Hans contacted his friend, just to make sure the plan he had in mind was the right one, or if it might end up in a dead end. It only took a few minutes to get a response:

"Don't worry, that might be the best thing you can set up. I would definitely keep her as far away from parties and people like Paris Hilton as possible. And you're sure that you really want to give this a try? Because, if you raise her hopes only to disappear after that, she's gonna be completely devastated".

"That's definitely not my plan. I don't know, I can't really explain it, but like I told you yesterday, I just can't get this girl out of my head"

"That's nice to hear. Haha, it feels so satisfying to be rigt, again. Sorry, had to get that one out. But if it really works out, don't forget to come over for dinner. You know how long Jada is trying now to hook you up, she would never forgive you if you finally have a girlfriend and wouldn't introduce them to each other"

"Yeah yeah, what would I do without my date doctor? Maybe I'll need your services again one day, so stay tuned"

"Dude, you know, I'm taking my roles very serious. Haha, anyway, good luck, and no matter how it turns out, keep me updated"

"I sure will, thanks Mr Smith"

"Nice one…"

After Hans was reassured that he was doing the right thing, he started to plan the rest of the day. He had another 4 hours left before he was supposed to pick up Miley. So he took his car and went to his favorite food market to buy some ingredients for tonight. He also had to pick up Daisy, who was something like his adopted dog. Since he was traveling and/or out of the country most of the time, he never wanted to have his own dog, since he couldn't bear to leave him alone that often. So he decided to support an organization called Hope for Paws, which tried to save as many stray dogs from the streets in and around Los Angeles as possible. Daisy was a 6 year old Collie who had a really tough life till she got rescued. Mistreated by her owner, left in the streets, having to survive on her own. When the organization got aware of her, she had to lead this cruel life for about 2 years, and she was in a very bad shape. Since Hans had a lot of free time, and was himself in a bit of a depressed

state as he was trying to recover from the surgery of his career ending knee injury, he decided to take her in as a foster dog. It turned out that each of them was exactly what the other one needed, and they gave support, hope and love to one another. She stayed with Hans for about 5 months, before he found a friend of his who was looking for a new dog to take in. And even if Daisy was living the best life possible now, she never forget the first human who ever showed her what it meant to be a dog, and what it meant to be loved as a dog and what kind of life these amazing animals deserved. And so Hans never stopped to pick her up regularly and spoil her for a day.

And just like always, even after he was in Europe for almost 6 month, the dog seemed to know exactly when he would show up, and so she was waiting at the door, excited to see her old friend again. Hans got a very enthusiastic welcome, including many face licks, and it took him about 5 minutes before he managed to get Daisy in the car.

After he arrived back home, he still had about 2 hours to kill, so he decided to gather a couple more information about Miley. What he was able to find this time made him understand to a certain extent why she crashed her life like she did. On-off relationship with Liam Hemsworth, seemingly they were on the point of getting engaged when it turned out that he cheated on her, just on her birthday, with 2 strippers in Las Vegas. After that she broke down during a live show, taken under the wing of Paris Hilton, one scandal after the other, attacked by every reporter in Hollywood, and left in the rain by every famous person that once claimed to be her friend. The names showing up here were especially Taylor Swift, Kylie Jenner, Justin Bieber or Katy Perry. Hans could slowly put together an image of the whole situation, and he felt really bad for Miley. Sure, a lot of her problems were her own doing, but she was still a young girl that got abandoned by a lot of people she put her trust in.

"Who knows", he was thinking to himself, "maybe today will also be for Miley the first step of her new life".

He didn't know why, but contrary to their first date (if you can even call it a date), Hans had a very good feeling and he was convinced that tonight would turn out differently. By now, he was sure that he was ready to do everything what was needed to help Miley back on her feet, and show her he would be there for her and that she could rely on him. If she should decide to let him become a part of her life of course.

Before taking a shower, he texted Miley:

"Hey, I completely forgot that I invited Daisy already today, I hope you don't mind if she's joining us?"

As he had finished his shower, he already got a somewhat offended reply:

"What do you mean? I thought it would be just the two of us? Look, if you're just looking for payback or you don't really want to see me, then we better just cancel the whole thing".

It looked like Hans didn't really think this true and immediately felt guilty. So he quickly took a selfie with Daisy and sent it with the following text to the young singer:

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't allowed to bring my little girl. But if you prefer, I will leave her at home. All alone, in this huge house, no friends, nothing to do…"

„Very funny, you're such a jerk. Don't you dare to leave her at home. God, she's so sweet. And now I'm even more curious about what we gonna do"

"I thought so. I just have to get dressed and I'm on my way. If you could just send me your address. You gonna figure out the rest later"

After everything was set up, Hans got dressed and he chose a casual style with shorts and t-shirt. He packed everything they needed, including Daisy, into his car and left. Since he took Daisy with him and he didn't really want to stand out from the people driving regular cars, he used his Hyundai Santa Fe. He owned this car mainly because of his parents, who used it every time they visited him. They somehow couldn't get used to his (a bit) fancier cars.

The Cyrus family lived about 15 minutes away from his place. This was one of the advantages of living in the Hollywood Hills, everything was pretty close together and everyone who lived here was either famous or extremely rich…a lot of times both, so that this whole district was under permanent surveillance, which meant no paparazzi and no stalkers. The people that lived here had to invest a certain amount into a private security firm, but it allowed them a maximum of privacy.

A little bit later, he drove through the gate, up to the Cyrus mansion. Hans estimated its value a bit lower than the one of his home, probably somewhere in the range of 8 to 10 million US dollar. According to Google, Miley's net worth was around 130 million, her father, as a former country music star had another 20-30 million. But it was pretty obvious who was the biggest star in the family by now.

Miley was waiting at the entrance door, it seemed like she was the only one home, or at least nobody was curious enough to come and take a look at Hans. In his eyes, the young pop star looked simply gorgeous. To his surprise, she kept to his advice and was wearing jeans shorts, a white t-shirt and she even had a sweater with her. Hans was asking himself a bit amused how long this obedience would last.

He got out of the car and gave Miley a hug, which made him realize that she smelled very good again, like a mix of a rather sweet perfume and freshly washed hair.

"Hey, I'm glad you could make it tonight. How are you?"

"Well, after someone told me a few unattractive things about myself…better. But come on now, let the doggy out"

With a big grin, Hans opened the door and let Daisy get out, who stormed over to Miley to get a good sniff of her, and then laid down on her back, ready to receive some belly rubs.

"Now that's surprising…usually she's very cautious when it comes to strangers"

"Really? Doesn't look like it though."

"Trust me. It took me about 5 days before she trusted me enough to not hide in a corner as soon as we were in the same room. But get in the car, I'll tell you her story along the way"

So they took off, and like he promised, Hans was telling Miley the story why and how he came to fostering Daisy. Of course this sad story resulted in a lot of petting and sweet talks for the dog, and Hans thought amusingly:" Well, looks like the dog might enjoy tonight even more than I do"

Since the traffic in LA was pretty low for once, they only needed about 30 minutes to reach their destination, Hans beach house in Malibu. He bought it about 18 months ago, because he always was

dreaming about owning his own house at the beach, and over time, it became some kind of a routine to come down here and spend 1 or 2 nights in this house, listen to the sound of the waves and just clear his mind. It was a perfect place to relax, and he hoped that this environment would have the effect on Miley.

"Here we are" he said as he parked the car in front of the garage.

"Believe it or not, but I have never been down here at the beach"

"Are you serious? You live in LA all these years, and you've never been at the famous Malibu beach?"

"Malibu, Venice, Santa Monica…none of them. I can't really walk around freely in LA, that's why I try to avoid being in public places as much as possible. And what place is more public than a public beach?"

"Yeah, you've got a point. But come in, we're not going to the beach right away"

Hans led Miley into his beach house. Having 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, it was considerably smaller than his mansion in the Hollywood Hills, but because of the exclusive location, it was worth about 7 million dollars.

"So, what did you plan? You still haven't told me what you're up to"

"You gonna find out very soon. Can you take care of Daisy for a couple of minutes, I just have to get a few things from the car"

When he came back in, he was loaded with 3 bags full of fresh ingredients.

"Hey, what's all this stuff?"

"Well, everything we need for cooking of course" Hans was grinning.

"Cooking? Are you serious? We gonna cook for ourselves?"

"Haha, of course. Why? Are you afraid I'm a better cook than you?"

"To be honest, I'm an awful cook…I actually never cook for myself…", It seemed like Miley was a little bit embarrassed.

"You're joking, right? You never cook for yourself?"

"Not really, no. When I started with Hannah Montana, I was still very young, and after that, we always had someone looking after us or at home we had a housekeeper. I mean, I know how to put a deep frozen pizza into the microwave, but that's about it".

"Very well…come over here, this is gonna be interesting…"

And indeed, the whole cooking process turned out to be quite fun, partly due to Miley's complete inability of cooking, but also because, just like during the PETA shooting, the two of them had a perfect chemistry and got along just perfect.

Hans himself wasn't a true master chef himself, put at least he knew the basics, which was hard to avoid if you're living by yourself half of your life. Contrary to a lot of other Nba stars, he has never been a fan of hiring privat employees, cooks, PA's or social media advisors. What's more, he had an

Italian aunt who, in his eyes, cooked the best pasta in the world, and more importantly, had taught him how to prepare a real Italian pasta sauce. Which was more or less the only dish he really mastered. Kind of…

Miley seemed to be surprisingly motivated, cutting vegetables, made fresh pasta, spicing everything and of course, at one point started pouring some flour over Hans. It took them about 40 minutes to prepare everything, and the result looked definitely eatable.

They sat down at the table, of course Daisy had her very own bowl of spaghetti, and they enjoyed their meal. And due to the fact that Americans always claimed to be experts when it comes to Italian food, but in reality had no clue, Miley was just overwhelmed from this old family recipe.

„If I had known that cooking could be so much fun, I would have done it already a long time ago" she smiled after finishing her plate.

"To be honest, I have never done it like this before. But I would say, I clean the dishes, and afterwards, since you've never been here before, we gonna take a little walk along the beach. Daisy seems to be a bit restless already"

"I can help you with the dishes"

"No need to, you're my guest. So just sit down with Daisy for another 5 minutes, and we'll be good to go"

Approximately 10 minutes later, they left the house through the backdoor and went down to the sea. They lingered over the beach and talked just about anything that came to their minds, while Daisy was running around like crazy and playing catch with the waves. On the way back to the house, Hans suddenly said:

"Come, I wanna show you a special place before we go back in"

"Now you make me curious"

He took her to a small hidden path which lead away from the house to a little hill, covered in grass and flowers. The path ended at an old looking bench which offered an amazing view over the beach and the sea and was the perfect place to observe the sunset.

"God, this is wonderful. And somehow perfectly timed", Miley said and looked at Hans with smiling eyes.

"What a lucky coincidence" Hans replied. „But seriously, I love this place. I come here regularly, to clear my head, think about life and especially if there's an important decision I have to make. Somehow, this place calms me down and helps me find myself again"

"And how many girls did you show this place already?" Miley asked mockingly.

"You want to know the truth? You're the first person ever that I bring to this place. It's somehow like my own private escape, and I don't think that anybody besides me has been here for the past 25 years"

"You're really serious about this, right? But why did you bring me here?" the singer asked emotionally.

"I have no idea. Maybe I think that a place like this is exactly what you need right now. Maybe, because last Wednesday, you completely turned my life upside down. Maybe you're the first person ever where I know that you understand what this place means to me. Maybe a bit of everything I just said…"

They sat down on the bench, Daisy next to them in the grass, and for the first time, Miley put her head against Hans shoulder and took his hand.

"No matter what the reason is…this place is just beautiful"

"And in all honesty now Miley, how are you? I have to admit that I did some researching, and the last years don't seem to have been easy for you"

"Researching? Sounds interesting…" said Miley with a grin, but suddenly switched to a very serious tone:

"Are you aware that you're the first person to ask me this question in a very long time? And the answer is, I don't know. All I know is that I'm not doing good, and that for several years now, I'm constantly feeling miserable. I really meant what I texted you this morning. Since I'm trying to get rid of my Hannah Montana image I'm doing things, saying things in which I don't recognize myself. Everybody's trying to tell me what to do, but nobody is ready to really help me. This one sentence you threw at me, that I completely lost myself, made me think a lot about the past. It made me realize a lot of things, and most of them are pretty ugly. I think I have to make a lot of changes in my life, and a big part of these changes have to be my so-called friends"

„Well, if you need any help with that, you know where you can find me" Hans winked at her.

"Why are you so nice to me? I really did my best to push you away from me"

"I don't know. Probably mainly because of the photo shoot. I never met someone before that impressed me that much in such a short amount of time. And like I said, I couldn't get you out of my head, and I have to admit that after last Saturday, I was a bit desperate. And still I wasn't able to believe that this girl I met a few days earlier wouldn't exist. Haha, I even asked the date doctor for advice"

"The date doctor? I thought something like that only exists in movies?"

"Well, yes…I was actually hinting at the movie. I was asking for advice from the main actor"

"Wait a second. You talked to Will Smith about me? Will Smith? Oh my God, I don't believe this…Will Smith…" That somehow seemed to shock her.

„He's my neighbor and my best friend in the US, who else should I talk to about something like that? But let's shut up for a few minutes and just enjoy the sunset"

So for the next minutes, they were sitting on the bench and watched, Miley cuddled to Hans, the sun sinking down in the ocean. After that they went back to the house and installed themselves comfortably on the big terrace, Miley with a glass of red wine, Hans with some Whiskey, and they just kept talking:

"So, any idea yet how you gonna get back on your feet?"

"Honestly, no. It surely won't be easy, but if I keep my actual lifestyle up, I'm afraid that I'm gonna end up like Amandy Bynes or Lindsay Lohan. And that scares the shit out of me"

"Hm…but you know the difference between them and you? They didn't have me" said Hans with a smile in his face.

Thankful, and suspiciously watery eyes, Miley shortly looked at him, just to turn her face away and look down to the ocean. This was such a beautiful and peaceful place to be, and so they just enjoyed the view and the company for another hour and talked a lot. It was around midnight when Hans suddenly said:

"I think it's about time I drive you home…you look like you're about to fall asleep any second"

„Haha, my old father will be very surprised to see me coming home that early" Miley said. "But you're right, I'm really exhausted."

"Alright then. We'll drop off Daisy, and after that it's your turn"

"Good to know…I'm coming right after the dog"

"Or maybe I just want to enjoy your company a little longer" Hans laughed.

After they dropped off Daisy at her owner, they drove back to Miley's place. Hans walked Miley to the door where he tried to collect all his courage and looked her into the eyes:

"Look Miley, before I go now, I really enjoyed tonight with you. And I really appreciate you opened up and were so honest with me. I really meant every word I've said, you can count on me and I will support you as much as I can. I mean, only if you're willing to let me be a part of your life".

"Only if I want? This was the best night out I had since I can remember, I didn't feel like this in years. I can't explain why, but in your company, I feel safe and comfortable, and most importantly, I don't feel the urge to pretend anything, I can just be myself. I have no idea why you even care about me, but I would be extremely happy if you were a big part of my life"

„Big part hu? Guess I'm just gonna risk it now…"

"Risk it? Risk what?" Miley asked surprised.

She didn't have to wait long for an answer, as Hans already leaned in to her and cautiously kissed her. Miley recovered pretty fast from her first surprise and returned the kiss. And this time was completely different than the drunken, smelly kiss from the nightclub. Hans felt like he was struck from lightning, he got dizzy and his legs started to shake. The kiss lasted for about 5 seconds, after which Hans muttered:

"Oh boy…that was…unbelievable"

"Hey, are you ok?" Miley asked worried.

"Haha, actually, even fantastic" he smiled back at her.

"So, what does this mean? Like, what's gonna happen now? Do you want to see me again? I really hope so…God, I suddenly feel like a shy teenager again"

"A shy teenager? You? Don't let your manager hear that" Hans teased her. "But seriously, let's start this slowly without any pressure and we'll see what will happen. But I definitely want to see you again. And Daisy wouldn't mind that too I suppose. If it's fine with you, I'll text you tomorrow?"

"Promise?"

"Malibu promise" said Hans while he kissed her again softly and made his way home, with a big stupid grin in his face.


	5. Billy Ray Cyrus

**Billy Ray Cyrus**

As Miley walked back into the house, she could see that there was still light in the tv room, which meant that her father was back from Nashville. As a former huge country star, he still spent a lot of time in this city which was known as the birthplace of country music, but also because his sister and his ex-wife were living there. She decided, contrary to her usual habits, to go in and talk to him before going to bed.

She found him half asleep and exhausted in his favorite armchair, but she knew that he wouldn't go to his room before he wasn't sure that she made it back home safely. It had become some sort of sad routine to him to stay up all night, worried and not knowing what his daughter was doing and which party she attended, or at what time and in what state she would come back home. More than once, he had to drag her up the stairs and lay her into her bed because she was too drunk to move, asking himself when things started to go so terribly wrong.

Billy Ray Cyrus became famous in the early 90's when he managed to publish a couple of country music hits, with his biggest success being Achy Breaky Heart. A couple of years after Miley was born and he realized how talented she was, he was pushing her into the showbusiness. He was forcing her career, and she became more successful than he could ever imagine. At the age of 18, Miley had already accomplished way more than Billy Ray did in his entire career. A lot of people kept criticizing him for this, but to his defense you have to say that he always only wanted the best for his little girl. Meanwhile, he started to doubt the choices he made for his daughter were the right ones, fearing that he ruined her childhood and maybe her whole life, and that it might have been better to just let her have a normal life. Since she was rebelling against her Hannah Montana image, she drove him crazy, and what hurt him the most was to see how his little girl was suffering day and night, and he had no idea how he could help her.

"Hey Dad, I'm home. You can give your old back a break and go to bed"

Billy Ray opened his eyes and looked surprised at his daughter:

"Oh, hey. I didn't expect you to be back this early. And definitely not dressed like that…where have you been?" he was asking. Billy Ray was a bit confused that his daughter came home shortly after midnight, completely sober and dressed like a normal teenage girl.

"I'm coming from a date" Miley said with a smile.

"And it's already over?"

"It is. We were cooking, took a walk on the beach, observed the sunset, had a glass of wine and did a lot of talking"

"You were cooking? And observing the sunset? Excuse me, but who are you, and what have you done with my daughter?"

Even though Billy Ray said this as a joke, it showed Miley how much she made her father suffer over the last years. She went to him, gave him a hug and a kiss and said:

"I'm really exhausted, I'm going to sleep. But I think that today, for the first time in a long while, I was able to be simply Miley, the little girl that you raised"

Deep in thoughts, Billy Ray watched his daughter go up the stairs. He had no clue what date she came from or who she even met with. But, for the first time in years, he felt a small glimpse of hope finding its way into his heart.


	6. Hollywood's newest couple

**Hollywood's new couple**

When Hans was finally back home, he was still amazed. The evening went perfect, and he had to admit that he never had a date before during which he felt so much at ease and comfortable. But what really wiped him off his feet was that kiss. It was just electrifying and he felt like a young teenager who got kissed by a girl for the first time, and to him, it was the final proof that he didn't want to live without this crazy girl anymore.

The weird thing about the situation was that, despite always being a sweet teenager, for a lot of people Miley wasn't considered as being very attractive anymore. Raddled, unpleasant, megalomaniac, arrogant…these were just some of the words used to describe her. What's more was the fact that she wasn't really his type. Usually, he required at least a certain height and blonde or light brown hair. Miley was about 5 ft 5, maybe 5 ft 6, dark brown hair, her nose was pretty small and her eyes a bit closer together than they should have been…and yet, she was the most beautiful girl that Hans had ever met.

Just as he was about to go to sleep, he received a text message from Miley:

"Hey, thanks again for this amazing evening. And don't forget what you've promised me. Good night "

"Haha, don't worry, I'll hit you up tomorrow. And I also enjoyed every second of tonight. Sweet dreams"

The next day, Hans woke up pretty early. The Californian weather usually inspired him to get out of bed around 9am latest, so he made himself breakfast, went through his morning workout routine and texted Will, like he promised before the date.

"Hey, I don't want to brag, but I would say yesterday evening was a huge success"

"You and me, lunch at Soprano's. I'm still in the CBS studios for another 30 minutes approximately, after that I'm done for the day. I need to know every single detail about yesterday's date, or Jada's going to murder me"

"Haha, got it, see you in an hour"

Hans was really happy that he was able to buy the house just next to the Smith mansion. Real friendships were a rare gift in Hollywood, and his relationship with Will was a big exception. He had to smile when he thought back to the day when they first met. Of course, his real estate agent told him beforehand about his potential neighbors, but Hans didn't really care about that. Since he was raised the right way by his parents, he didn't care if his new neighbors were some famous Hollywood people or a regular waiter. Immediately after he moved in, he put a welcome basket with all sorts of useless stuff (like pasta, candies, wine etc…) together and went over to their house. Will and Jada were completely stunned and their first thought was that it must have been some sort of hidden camera prank. In a neighborhood where new people moved in and out like every week, this sort of behavior just wasn't something they were used to. Anyway, after this first meeting, Will and Hans quickly became pals and it didn't take long before they had built a deep friendship, and by now, they were kind of known as Hollywood's most popular friends.

During their lunch, Will wanted to know every single detail about that date, and he was truly happy for Hans. He had always been worried that his friend planned on staying single for too long and would miss the right time to settle down. He knew from his own experience how fast you could get used to this single life, consisting of non-stop parties and young women…and how deep you could fall.

So after Will had gathered enough information to report to his wife, Hans drove back home and finally texted Miley:

"Hey, how are you, slept well? I hope you didn't have a sudden change of mind and would still like to see me again?"

"Hi, I'm really happy you texted me. There's no way I'm gonna change my mind, I would be more than happy to go on a second date with you"

"Well, when would you be free? I'm pretty flexible right now, I have no upcoming projects, at least not for the moment, but I suppose your schedule is pretty busy?"

"Not really, no. I have a few things where we are still negotiating, but I have no gigs for the moment. So, the next days, I'll be available, at least in the evening"

"Sounds great. How about tonight then?"

"Did you already make some plans? I'm ready for anything…except going to parties maybe… "

"Oh wow, do I really got the right number? But let's see…going to the movies is out of question, we don't want you to cause a panic. How about movie night at my place? Pizza, popcorn, bad movie…sounds perfect to me?"

"Let's say 7pm?"

"Perfect"

"Ok, see you later, I'm really looking forward to see you. Oh, and this time you have to give me your address"

Hans texted her back and also sent his address. So he really would have a second date with Miley Cyrus. He felt, which was unusual for him, excited and nervous…and was looking forward to this like a teenager to his first date with a girl. He already ordered the pizzas and drove to the supermarket to get a few snacks and drinks. Back home, he took a shower and waited for his date to arrive.

A few miles away, Miley was fighting with the same symptoms. Yesterday evening was the for the first time since she was about 16 years old that she felt truly happy. She still had no idea how she was supposed to regain control over her life, but she knew that having met Hans could change everything. And she was convinced that it would be a change for the better. He managed to make her question a lot of things, the reasons why she wanted to change her image, but mostly how she wanted to live her life and what kind of person she wanted to be. She still didn't really know the answers, but the one thing she knew for sure was, that she wasn't the person that her management and her false friends pushed her to be. She also thought a lot about her girl gang and she realized that the other members only took advantage of her. Everytime Miley tried to ask for help, she was immediately shut down, the only thing that mattered was finding the next party and get as much attention from the media as possible. She never felt at ease around them, and the last time that she felt that someone loved her just because she was Miley was all the way back when she was a little girl and spent time with her Godmother, Dolly Parton. And yet, she felt extremely nervous, afraid to destroy everything again, like she did so many times over the last years, especially when it came to her father who tried again and again, without success, to pull her out of this swamp.

As she was about to leave, she went to Billy Ray who was sitting in the kitchen.

"Hey Dad, I'm out. I don't know what time I'll be back, but please don't stay up for me, you really don't have to worry."

"No club outfit? Again? Where are you going?"

„Second date. Movie night, including pizza and popcorn"

"Miley, who is this guy? And how serious are you about this? Since yesterday, you seem completely changed. Don't get me wrong, I love it, it's just a bit suspicious to me"

"You know, I'd rather wait till tomorrow to talk about it. And I'm taking it very serious, because I have a feeling that this might be the exact person I need in my life"

"Alright sweetheart, we'll talk tomorrow. Have fun"

"Thanks Dad"

Miley knew that she had to make up for a lot of bad things she did in the past, especially when it came to her father. But she wasn't ready for this conversation yet, first she had to know where this romance with Hans was leading to. She really hoped that it would turn into something serious and stable, she was just tired and desperately needed someone she could lean and rely on.

Point 7pm, she arrived at Hans place and caught him completely off guard. He thought he actually had at least another 20 minutes before Miley would show up.

Again, she looked amazing. She was wearing short jeans, with a white top and a black blouse. After they greeted each other, Hans showed Miley the house, and most of all, she was impressed by the incredible view you had over the city of LA. This asset was actually one of the main criterias why Hans decided to buy this mansion. There were other, bigger and more expensive houses available, but this was the one where he felt at home from the moment he stepped in.

They sat down on a bench in a corner next to the pool, where you had an amazing view over the LA skyline.

"How are you? I hope you had a nice day till now?"

"I'm definitely feeling better than the previous months. I have no idea when was the last time that I slept so well. And you?"

"Besides being under a lot of pressure tonight, I'm great" said Hans with a grin.

"Haha, why are you under pressure?"

"Well, I was having lunch with Will, and when I'll be calling him tomorrow to report about my date tonight, he doesn't expect anything less than telling me when I'll be over for dinner or a barbecue or something like that…together with my new girlfriend" Oh wow, Hans felt his face blushing…something that didn't happen anymore since high school.

"Why are they so obsessed with hooking you up anyway?"

"Great question. And, I have no idea…"

"And who is this mysterious girlfriend, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Oh, well…actually, you know…well…" stuttered Hans

"Yes?"

"Phew, I was actually hoping that she's sitting here right next to me. But I can totally understand if you don't want to rush anything, or if you're not interested at all, I mean…"

"Hans?"

"Yes?" Jesus, this didn't go as planned at all.

"Just kiss me"

"Oh…with pleasure"

So he finally shut up and kissed Miley. Afterwards, they stayed on the bench for a couple more minutes, before going back to the house. The pizzas were supposed to arrive any minute.

When they sat down at the kitchen table and focused on their food, Miley suddenly wanted to talk about something serious:

"Look, I'm very happy how everything turned out, and if anybody had told me this before the PETA shooting, I wouldn't have believed a single word. But are you really aware what you would be getting yourself into? I mean, every day I realize more how stupid I was over the last years, how many people I've hurt and disappointed. And that the whole world will probably turn against me. And if there's one thing I don't want to happen, it's that you gonna wake up in a few days or weeks and regret your decision. Because, I already have this feeling now, that you are that person I can lean on and could make me happy again. And if it should get serious between us, just for you to realize that you don't want to be with me, I have no idea how to deal with that"

Hans was expecting a lot of things, but not such an emotional confession. He only met her a couple of times, but he already figured out that Miley's personality was way deeper and more complex than he initially thought. She definitely had an awful reputation in public, but the more time he spent with her, the more he realized how special she was, but also that she must have been disappointed and hurt by other people more than once. So he got up, walked over to her and put his arms around her:

"You know, I actually still can't believe that you're, for whatever reason, interested in me, I mean, you're Miley Cyrus. But since I have this stupid habit of building my own opinion instead of listening to social media or press articles, I came to the conclusion that you are the most wonderful and beautiful young woman I have ever met in my life. And if it really comes to the point that the whole world turns against you…that's fine, I have a thick skin, if I have to place myself between you and the world to keep it away from you, so be it"

Miley wasn't able to reply anything to this. She had her eyes closed, with a few tears running down her cheeks. After all this time of being on the edge of depressions, being cheated on, being attacked by media, having suffered from drug and alcohol abuse, losing herself and trusting the wrong people, after being sure she would never make her way back into a stable life, it really happened. She found a person that made her feel safe and secure, someone she felt in a way like she never did before, and for the first time since she was 16 years old, she didn't cry tears of despair but tears of happiness.

Later, when they were lying on the couch (as a good representative of the female gender, Miley fell asleep about 30 minutes into the movie), Hans was looking at her face, surprised about how things had turned out. He memorized every single detail of this beautiful face, the tiny scar on her front, the little beauty spot below her right eye, the dimples he could see because she was even smiling in her sleep now…he could have watched her for hours. He realized that this relationship wouldn't be easy, but he was sure of one thing. No matter what it would take, he would do everything in his powers that this wonderful girl he got to know over the last 2 days wouldn't disappear again. And if the whole world would turn against Miley, they first had to go through him.


	7. The morning after

**The next day**

Around 9.30 am, Billy Ray was sitting in the kitchen, reading the newspaper when he was surprised by an unusual sight for this early time of the day. Miley walked in, so he put the LA Times aside and said:

"Now look at that. So, how did it go? If I judge by the look on your face, it must have been quite successful"

"To be honest, it went way better than I could hope for" Miley replied with a smile.

"What does that mean?"

„What exactly?"

„Well, did you come to a conclusion if this should turn into something more serious?"

"I'm pretty sure it already did. At least it feels serious"

"So will you tell me now who this mysterious guy is?"

"Since when are you so curious? But his name is Jerome Hansen, I don't know if you already heard about him…"

"Oh, just the usual. Former NBA player, Olympic Gold Medalist, powerful movie producer, co-founder of Google…where did you meet someone like that?"

„We did the PETA shooting together last week. And, although I really did my best to scare him off last weekend, he gave me a second chance. We don't want to rush anything now, but for the first time since the break-up with Liam, I feel ready to let another man into my life again and have a serious relationship"

"Alright, if he hasn't anything planned yet, you can invite him for dinner tonight"

"Oh come on Dad, please don't start like this now, it's still too early for that"

"No Miley, not this time. I want to meet him, and that's why you will tell him to show up. I insist"

Miley looked at her father and was surprised. It was very rare that he played the Dad card, on the other hand it showed her how important this was to him.

"Ok, I'm gonna ask him"

So she sent Hans a text to which he replied he would happily accept the invitation. Even if it made him nervous to think about meeting Miley's father. He kept telling himself that he survived such a ruthless environment like the NBA, was one of the most influential people in Hollywood and a multi-billionaire and yet…this was Billy Ray Cyrus, a country music idol, more than 25 million sold albums, good friend of the legend within, Dolly Parton (who was Miley's godmother)…and he was tall and looked like a real cowboy…but ok, he knew he had to do this sooner or later anyway.

He spent the rest of the day at home, lying at the pool and enjoyed the California sun. He only left his house once to drive to a close by liquor store and bought a good bottle of Whiskey for Miley's dad…you always want to make a good first impression.

He arrived at the Miley's house exactly at 7 pm. The gate was opened and he drove up to the front entrance where his girlfriend was already waiting at the door. She came down the stairs, hugged him and gave him a big kiss.

"Hm, I could get used to being welcomed like that"

"I would even say you have no choice but to get used to this" Miley whispered.

"Haha, sounds good to me. But let's go inside, we don't wanna keep the old man waiting"

So they went inside, and to his surprise, the first person he met was Miley's younger sister Noah, who usually lived with her mother in Nashville, but came to visit for a couple of days. Afterwards, they went into the kitchen, where Hans finally met Billy Ray Cyrus himself. He introduced himself and presented his bottle of whiskey as a gift to the head of the Cyrus family.

„If you think this can help you to make a good first impression kid, I have to tell you…that plan definitely worked" Billy Ray laughed, and at the same time made sure that Hans could calm down and feel welcome. He was still a bit nervous, but they were having a relaxed and open conversation right from the start, during which he could gather a lot of information about Billy Ray's music career, but on the other hand, the musician was also very eager to learn about Hans basketball achievements. Miley was, which was very untypical, silently listening to the conversation for most of the time, and could see that the two men seemed to get along great.

Like every good American, Billy Ray had prepared a barbecue consisting of delicious spare ribs, baked potatoes, salad, corn and bread, with an amazing home-made barbecue sauce, prepared after an old family recipe. Hans was just amazed and said:

"It's somehow sad that you weren't able to pass your cooking talents on to your daughter."

„Haha, right. You still have to tell me how you managed to get Miley into the kitchen…to cook…" he replied.

The atmosphere stayed relaxed and friendly throughout the dinner, but when the plates were empty and put aside, Billy Ray suddenly said:

"You'll have to excuse us for a few minutes Miley, but I'm gonna take your boyfriend outside for a little private talk"

"Come on dad, really?"

Hans, who had expected this anyway, quickly said:

"Hey, don't worry. He's your father, of course he wants to know what I'm up to"

Still worried, Miley turned to her father:

"Alright, but be nice, ok? I'll be in the living room"

Hans was curious as he followed the musician outside where they sat down next to the swimming pool. It didn't take long before Miley's father started the conversation:

"Alright, usually I don't interfere with Miley's life, but we've reached a point where I think it is absolutely necessary. My first question is very simple. How important is Miley to you?"

As this was a question that Hans expected to hear tonight, he already knew more or less what to say:

"Alright, I think we can have a straightforward conversation here, and I'm gonna be as honest as I can. Actually Billy, Miley isn't even my type. Until now, I was always into tall, light haired and sporty women. And yet, your daughter is the most beautiful and amazing girl I have ever met…and I'm telling you this after dating 2 Victoria Secret models. Truth be told, I have no idea how, but your daughter amazed and impressed me so much, that a simple photo shoot was enough that I couldn't get her out of my head anymore. I would say, she already means a lot to me. I actually planned to enjoy my single life for a couple more years, and all it took was a couple of hours with Miley to forget about that plan"

"I just want to make sure. I don't know how much she has told you or how much you figured out by yourself through social media and press articles, but in the last years, we've seen it all. Drugs and alcohol, wild parties, affairs, public breakdowns, the breakup with Liam, depressions, scandals and so on, and so on. Trust me, this book is thicker than the bible. And just when I thought I was beginning to completely lose her and I have to somehow drag her away from this whole entertainment business, one evening she comes back home from a date and seems completely changed. In a way, that even I regained some hope that everything could still turn out to be just fine. I just want to make clear that you somehow managed to get through to her, something that I wasn't capable of doing for the past 6-7 years, and I can already tell how much she relies on you after this short amount of time. That's why I want to make sure you really care about Miley and you're not just looking to have some fun, or want to use her to get some publicity…because that would literally kill her"

"I really appreciate your open words. And don't worry, I'm definitely not someone who seeks public attention. And yes, some things she told me, some things I managed to find out by myself. But usually, I prefer to build my own opinion instead of giving a crap about what you can find on the internet, and to me, Miley needs help. And she deserves every little bit of support she can get, because she's unique and wonderful. You just have to get through this rough surface that she put on over the last years"

"I'm really happy to hear this. There's only one thing left that worries me a bit. How will you react when it gets tough? She made a lot of enemies over the past years and now she has caught, only God knows how, one of the most wanted bachelors in the world. You're not only gonna be with a girl that's emotionally unstable and stuck in a world that mainly consists of parties, drugs and alcohol, but there will also be hostilities, from the media, from the music industry, fans, public…I'm in this business way too long to have any illusions left. The attacks will come, and you have to be aware that she can't deal with them on her own."

"I know. And again, I have this stupid habit of taking my own decisions, and I won't let my relationship be influenced by anything that's said in the media, from so-called stars or fans. And, about the hostilities, I know that they will come, probably sooner than later. But hey, you're Billy Ray Cyrus. If they want to reach her, they have to get through the both of us. And that's pretty much impossible"

"You're really serious about this, aren't you?"

"Yes sir"

After this exchange, Billy Ray got up from the table, walked to the kitchen door and shouted:

"Miley, can you come? And bring a bottle of whiskey. The good one."

It seemed like Miley was eagerly waiting for them to finish and almost ran out with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Billy Ray took the bottle, poured two glasses and gave one to Hans:

"Welcome to the family my boy"

"Thanks, that really means a lot to me"

The two had a toast, drank their whiskey and Miley could already tell that there was a special friendship being created between her father and her boyfriend.


	8. An unexpected visit is announced

**An unexpected visit**

The next 4 days, they spent mostly together in Hans house, before they would have to separate for some time, since Miley had planned to travel to Nashville where she was supposed to have a couple of performances together with Dolly Parton. She was already pretty excited, it would be the first time in a long while that she would perform together with her godmother and play some country music. Additionally to this, she would also shoot some videos that included some old hits like Jolene.

They didn't made their relationship public yet, and Hans agreed with Billy Ray that they should still wait a little bit. Everything still felt new, and every single day, Hans discovered something new about his girlfriend and fell in love a little more. Tonight was their last evening together before they would be apart for 5 days, and Hans finally kept his promise and told Will that they would come over to his house for dinner. It would also be the first time that Miley would stay for the night, which, considered her wild years, took surprisingly long. But also Miley didn't want to rush anything, and she realized that Hans had raised some feelings inside her, that she thought she would never be able to feel again. She felt like living in a cloud, and she knew exactly that, revealing this relationship to the public, would cause an earthquake. Whether this would be good or bad, she had no idea, all she knew was that she wanted to enjoy this quiet time with her boyfriend for a little more.

She arrived at 6 pm at the house and dropped off a few personal thinks before they were heading over to the Smith family. The young girl seemed to be somewhat nervous, so Hans asked her:

"Is something wrong? You're so…restless…"

"Well, it's the first time that I'm meeting one of your friends, and this friend is nobody less than Will Smith"

"Haha, come on, you're used to meet famous musicians or actors all the time anyway, that's not new to you"

"Not really. But this is Will Smith, that's Hollywood's absolute elite. I'm miles away from his class, and people like him usually don't spend time with underclass artists like me."

"Don't worry, Will's a great guy, and besides, he wants to get to know you, not the other way around. Everything's gonna be fine. You'll see."

A little later, they arrived at the door which was opened by Will himself.

"There you are, it's about time, Jada's already starting to lose patience"

He gave Miley a warm hug and said to her:

"So you're the girl that finally managed to put this guy on a leash. You really have to tell me how you managed to do that" And with this simple but warm welcome, Will managed that Miley calmed down and felt at ease from the start.

Jada was also the perfect host and she really seemed to care about Miley. Hans was touched by how much they tried to make Miley feel welcome, and it wasn't the first time that he asked himself why Hollywood's most popular family seemed to care so much about his well-being.

After they finished their dinner and were having a drink, Jada suddenly started to talk about a more serious subject:

"Have you already thought about when you're going public with your relationship?"

"Well, we thought we'd still wait a little bit. I mean, we haven't realized it completely yet, so we want to spend some more time together first and get to know each other better" Hans said.

"Sounds reasonable. If you're open for an advice, do it yourself, and don't let any paparazzi catch you beforehand. If it comes out like that, people will be convinced that it's staged and all PR"

"I suppose you're right. But since we've started this subject anyway now, you have about 30 years of experience of living your relationship in public, you got any other important advice?"

This time it was Will who answered:

"I only got one. No matter what happens in public, or is written in some kind of article or social media, if you have a problem, which is only normal, every couple is going through some tough times at one point, take your time to sort it out and ignore everything that's written or said by anybody else. Jada and me let it go too far once, and almost let the media tear us apart, and after that, we made a vow to never let this happen again. If there's an issue, talk to each other, and remember that the only one you're accountable to is your partner. Most importantly, don't leave any unsolved problems behind if one of you has to travel to Europe, go on tour, do a shooting or whatever. There's nothing more dangerous for a relationship than unsolved issues that keep nagging on you for weeks"

Later, when they said goodbye, it was Jada who took Miley a bit apart to talk to her:

"Look, Will and I know that the past couple of years haven't been easy for you. So, if you have to stay in LA on your own for a couple of days and you're afraid of drifting back into old habits, or your so-called friends want to take advantage of Hans absence to pull you back into their party-life, just call me or Will. We will be there for you, especially Will will be able to help you, since he went through a similar phase years ago"

She gave Miley, who had to wipe a tear from her eye, a big hug. The young girl didn't know how to thank Jada, but she asked her:

"Why are you so nice to me? I somehow feel shabby because I really don't think that I deserve any of this"

"Well, foremost because of Hans. He's a great guy, and he has become Will's best friend. You know, when they stopped The Fresh Prince, he was also having this period of self-destruction and self-hatred. He managed to get back on his feet by himself, even more, he made it all the way to the top. But he had to learn the hard way, that real friendship is something that's not to be found easily in Hollywood. I can tell you, there's nothing harder than seeing your husband losing his smile every day a little more. And just when I was convinced that we've reached the lowest point possible, this former basketball player moves in next to us, comes over with a basket full of stupid presents and the most unexpected thing happened. Will found his soulmate, and I will be forever thankful that he made my husband smile and enjoy his life again. But if you ever gonna tell him this, I will kill you"

"Haha, don't worry, your secret is safe. But you're right, it's very hard to feel depressed in his presence"

"True. But that's not the only reason. Even though I only know you for a couple of hours, I can already tell that you're an amazing young woman Miley, and don't let anyone tell you anything else. I know how brutal and fake this entertainment business can be, and you're still so young, even if it feels like you're in it for ages. So, whenever you have a problem, or just need a friend to talk to, you know where to find me"

After these kind words, Miley and Hans said their goodbyes and headed back home. They both took a shower (in different bathrooms) and went straight to bed, since Miley had to catch an early flight. She rested her head on his chest and they were talking about the evening and the last days. Miley still hadn't realized how completely her life had turned around since she met Hans during this PETA event, but she knew that she would definitely miss him like crazy over the next days. And she was also a little scared, because it would the be the first time since they met that she had to make it through the week without his support. But at least her father and godmother would be there with her.

"I really don't know how I'm supposed to survive these next days without you" she said in a sad tone.

"Oh come on, you're gonna be fine. You can always call me, and you have your family with you"

"True. But I suppose that's something we gonna have to get used to. I have to travel a lot, you as well…there will always be some periods of time where we won't be able to be together."

"Well, I suppose that means that we must use the time we have in the best way we can" Hans answered and looked deep into Miley's shiny eyes.

Later that night, when Hans was still awake, lying in bed with Miley in his arms, he thought about what just happened. It was pretty unusual nowadays that it took them so look to sleep together for the first time. And it was completely different than Hans would have expected. He didn't expect her to be so tender and sweet, but more that her craziness would also be part of her sexual life. But this wasn't the case at all, at least not tonight. They took forever to explore and enjoy their bodies, and again, every time Miley touched him, Hans felt like he was struck by lightning. He, on the other hand, spent a lot of time discovering her many tattoos and every single part of her body. In other words, it was the best night of his entire life.

The next morning, he had a very hard time to say goodbye to Miley. About two weeks ago, he couldn't even imagine anything like this, but he had really found that girl that made him happy, and letting her go for 5 days now wasn't easy. But having a relationship with an international pop star, that was probably one of the things you had to accept.

"And you'll behave, alright? If anything should happen, you call me and I'll be on the next flight to Nashville"

"Don't worry, I somehow don't feel at all like provoking any new scandals. I'm gonna miss you like crazy though"

"Same here. But you should head to the airport now, I don't want you to miss your flight"

"It's a private jet, it won't leave without me"

"Right. I still keep forgetting which family I got myself into"

"Haha, you better don't. I'll see you on Saturday"

"Saturday" Hans replied and kissed Miley. And just as she turned around to go to her car, he called her name again.

"Miley"

"Yes?" she asked surprised.

„I love you"

There, he said it. For the first time in his life, he said this sentence to a woman, and the effect of these 3 simple words on Miley were astonishing. Her cheeks blushed, her heartbeat accelerated and her eyes got watery.

She whispered: "I love you too", kissed Hans one more time and headed off to the airport.

He watched as the car left through the gate and tried to realize what had happened to him…just a week ago, he was single by choice, planning to enjoy his life to the fullest, and now he felt bad because his girlfriend was gone for about 2 minutes. He still couldn't believe it though…Miley Cyrus was his girlfriend. One of the things that people liked so much about Hans was the fact that he was walking through Hollywood like Charlie through the chocolate factory. With shiny eyes, beating heart and completely amazed by the fact that he was allowed to meet all these famous people and do all these amazing things, completely forgetting that he was a superstar himself that a lot of VIPs tried to befriend.

Later in the day, while he was trying to keep himself busy, he got a text from one of his friends from Luxembourg. He and his girlfriend had just arrived in the United States, planning to spend the last days of their trip in Los Angeles, so he asked if it Hans had time to meet and catch up, since they hadn't seen each other for some time.

Hans had spent the last few months in Luxembourg, working on his rehabilitation after that horrible knee injury. During this time, he visited the practices and games of the small basketball club in which his brother was still active as a referee as much as he could. It wasn't the club they had grown up in (he went to the US and his brother had major issues with some of the board members), but he fell in love with this club from the moment he stepped in the gym, and you could say that he made some very close friends there. That's why he sent this text back:

"Great idea. I'm just a bit offended you didn't tell me earlier. Anyway, if you can still cancel your hotel booking, do it, I got lots of free rooms"

"Haha, thanks, that sounds great. We didn't want to bother you too much, since we're staying 4 days in LA. But if you insist, we'll gladly accept your offer"

"I do insist. Where are you now anyway?"

"Colorado. We stay for another 2 days in Denver, after that we fly to Las Vegas for 3 days and to finish up, LA"

"Not bad. But call me before you leave Vegas, I'll pick you up at the airport. So, Saturday, my girlfriend comes back and on Sunday the two of you. Sounds like fun"

"Wait, you have a girlfriend? How did that happen?"

„Long story which is better told with a few drinks. But why are you surprised that I have a girlfriend?"

"No idea . See you on Sunday"

Now that was a surprise, but he was looking forward to introduce Miley to some of his Luxembourgish friends. He was hoping they would be able to regularly spend time in this small country between Germany and France, and knowing some people from there might already be a good start. But now, he still had 4 days to kill, and he slowly started to have some ideas what he could do about that.

He spent the first day entirely in his company to get the latest updates, and the news he got from his managers were very encouraging. They would end the year with a net profit of at least 60 million US dollars. Hans thought this was a bit of irony right here. He bought the company mainly because of tax reasons, and now it turned into a real gold mine. That's why he asked one of the secretaries to prepare a document which stated that fifty percent of the profit would be given to his employees as a yearly bonus. They did most of the hard work, so they should be rewarded.

The following day was dedicated to the study of some movie scripts that one of his assistants had selected for him. He always wanted to check the scripts with the most potential by himself, which was more of a pleasure to him than real work, because he loved reading books and scripts.

The title of the script that managed to fascinate him the most was Suicide Squad. The story played in the DC universe, but didn't focus on the super heroes. In the storyline, the Government tried to set up a special unit, consisting of the most feared criminals in the US. The description of the characters was very detailed, and Hans already had some ideas for the cast.

A little bit later, Miley called him to talk about everything she had done in Nashville till now. She spent a lot of time with her godmother, who was amazed about how Miley seemed to have changed, and couldn't wait to meet Hans in person. His girlfriend would also send him a video she wanted him to see. It was a remake of Dolly Parton's biggest hit, Jolene. It was the first title of a video series called "The Backyard Sessions", which consisted in Miley, together with a small country band, playing some of her godmother's greatest hits (and also a few other country songs) in the backyard of her family's farm house.

After seeing the video, he only texted back one sentence:

"My God, you're amazing"

"That means you like it?"

"Sexy, unbelievably talented artist, great song…what more could you ask for?"

"Haha, thanks for the compliments. How is LA?"

„Good till now. I spent most of the time in the office, reading through new projects and scripts, and at least one of them is really promising. Oh, and one of my friends from Luxembourg called me, they gonna arrive in LA on Sunday and stay for 4 nights. I offered them to stay at my house, and I thought you might want to meet them. If that's ok for you?"

„Sure, I would be happy to meet some of your friends from Luxembourg"

After this, they kept talking for a couple more minutes before Miley had to head back to work.

The next two days were dedicated to his fitness program. Although he didn't had any plans to restart his NBA career, he still felt the need to keep his body in shape. Especially now that he had a girlfriend who was 8 years younger than him, he had to make sure to look good for her. He met up with Kobe Bryant in the training facilities of the Los Angeles Lakers. Kobe resigned a bit more than a year ago, but other than Hans he did it voluntarily and on his own terms. At the beginning of Hans career, they didn't really get along, but they always respected each other. Hans was able to reach the NBA finals with his team, the Orlando Magic, once but lost the best of 7 series against Kobe and his Lakers team 4-2. Especially the last game of the series became legendary. The Lakers won 110-107 and crowned themselves as NBA champions. Kobe scored 58 points, the most points ever recorded in a game of the finals. Hans wasn't much worse and was able to put up 53 points. For the whole game, they went at each other with no mercy, and fans all over the world agreed that there has never been such a duel in a final game. After Hans had to leave the court after committing his 6th foul about 5 seconds before the end of the game, for the first time in the history of the Staples Center, the fans got up from their seats to give a standing ovation to a player from the opponent team. Later, Hans admitted that this was his hardest, but at the same time sweetest defeat in his career. What gained him a lot of respect was the fact that he, unlike most superstars and sadly also most of his teammates, didn't head to the locker room as fast as possible, but congratulated every single one of the Lakers players, applauded during the title ceremony and all at the end, still with tears in his eyes, even thanked the fans as he finally left the court. From this day on he had a special relationship with this city, every time the Magic played here, he got a warm welcome from the fans, and the Lakers management tried more than once to sign him, but his loyalty to the Florida franchise never made a deal possible.

Also his relationship with Kobe got better and better over time, and during the Olympic Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro where they were able to bring home the gold medal (after the Dream Team got destroyed 4 years ago by a couple of teams, only finishing in 5th place, Kobe and Hans were the only All-Stars ready to take on the challenge), they became very close friends. Until today, people loved them for being ready to lead a bunch of college kids and even managed to beat teams like Argentina, Spain or Serbia.

More and more people gathered around as they went through their workout, and also a couple of young Laker players were amongst the spectators. And with Kobe being Kobe, they got challenged to a 2 on 2 tournament, where they painfully learned that they still had a long way to go to make it to the top of the NBA.

After they were done with practice, Kobe and Hans went to a restaurant which belonged to the UCLA training center to have lunch, and after a couple of minutes, Kobe said:

"Looks like you recovered pretty well from your injury, 1 or 2 weeks of training camp, and you would be back in shape"

"Yeah, I'm definitely surprised about how well it has recovered. In the beginning, I really thought I would never be able to fully use it again. But thanks again for all your help and advice, I don't think I would have made it this far without it."

"Well, I still knew from my torn Achilles tendon how hard this is, physically and mentally. I was 32 at the time, and getting yourself motivated for rehab was the hardest part. And my goal was to play for a couple more seasons, while you were only focused on being able to have a normal life. But since you're back in such a good shape, how about giving a comeback for the Lakers for, say…2-3 years?"

"Haha, no thanks. You know it just wouldn't be right. Even though the Lakers are the only franchise that might have been able to lure me away from Orlando towards the end of my career. But I'm done with the NBA for good. The only thing that bothers me a bit is that I never really had the opportunity to say goodbye."

"True. Having this one last game is always something special", Kobe said and looked at Hans. "You have any plans for the weekend? We could go to a game and talk about how everything was better in our times"

"Hm, sorry, not this weekend. My girlfriend comes back from Nashville on Saturday, and on Sunday some friends from Luxembourg"

"Wait. YOU have a girlfriend?"

"Yes. I have a girlfriend. I really don't know why everybody is so surprised about me having a girlfriend?"

Kobe preferred to not say anything to that, but asked with a big smile:

"And who's the happy girl?"

"Miley Cyrus…"

"Miley Cyrus? Seriously? That's…surprising…she doesn't really represent the type of girl you're usually dating"

"Tell me something new. But I don't know…somehow she just flashed me"

"Haha, who would have thought? The most wanted bachelor of the US gets caught by a former teen star. But I suppose it's not official yet? I probably would have heard about it."

"No, we don't want to rush anything. Miley had a pretty hard time over the past years, and I think it's more important to get her back on her feet first"

"Yeah, I could follow a bit of her through the media, she really did it all. But I wish you only the best, I hope she's the one for you…I mean, you're not really getting any younger…"

"Well, thanks a lot" Hans grumbled.


	9. Together again

**Together again**

Finally, Saturday arrived and Hans got out of bed pretty early. Miley was expected to be back in Los Angeles in the late afternoon, and he wanted to get a few things done till then. But first, he treated himself with a nice breakfast before he pushed himself through a 2-hour workout routine. Afterwards, he had lunch at home before he left to do some errands. Flowers, food, drinks…just a normal trip to the supermarket.

Around 4pm, he suddenly got a text from Miley:

"Hey. I'm terribly sorry, but I'm gonna be late. My manager just received a call from the producers of The Voice, they eventually would like to hire me as one of their judges for the next season. We're about to drive from the airport to the studios to get a first impression. Afterwards, I'll get to you as fast as possible, probably somewhere around 7-8pm."

"No problem, sounds like an amazing opportunity for you. Wishing you luck, see you later"

So he still had a couple of hours to kill. Since he already had everything prepared, he sat down on the couch and did what any real man would have done in that situation: he played video games.

Shortly after 7pm, the doorbell rang and Miley was back. Thankfully, Hans took her in his arms and thought again how unexpected he stumbled into this relationship, but also how much Miley meant to him after being together for only such a short time. Latest after she pulled out two boxes of Chinese take away food, he was perfectly happy again.

Before they started their dinner, he went to the living room to get the flowers he bought and gave them to his, very surprised looking, girlfriend.

"Oh wow, they are amazing. Why am I getting them?"

"Um, you're my girlfriend and I didn't see you for 5 days and I missed you? Or maybe I just wanted to buy you some flowers? Do I really need a special occasion to give you a small present?"

"Oh well, I think I still have to get used to these things. My former relationships were somehow completely different. All that mattered was to find the next party, get noticed and present ourselves to the public as much as possible. Back in the time, I couldn't imagine enjoying these quiet evenings at home"

Hans smiled and said:" I guess you have no choice but to get used to being treated like you're supposed to be"

After this conversation, they finally started to eat and Hans asked Miley why the producers of The Voice were suddenly interested in recruiting her:

"Don't get me wrong, you definitely have more than enough know-how, experience and talent, I'm just a bit surprised, you don't really seem to fit into the concept. Till now, their judges always consisted of people with a…how should I say…flawless reputation…"

"They actually asked my godmother, but she can't or doesn't want to participate, I don't really know. I think she's afraid that she's too old for this kind of show. But somehow she convinced the producers that I would be the perfect backup. According to good old Dolly, I have completely changed and found back on the right way, and The Voice would be the perfect platform to prove this to the entire world"

"Haha, like you said, good old Dolly. And how did it go today? And are you sure this is something you really want to do? You know I won't let anyone, especially your manager, push you into something you don't feel comfortable with"

"I know, but don't worry, I love The Voice, and I would be thrilled to be a part of it. And after today's meeting, I feel very positive about it. And concerning my manager, it's not the same anymore. My father fired her, and I went back with his management"

"Now, that's some great news"

They spent the rest of the evening outside at the pool, having a drink and talking about Miley's trip and their future plans. She was going to spend the night with Hans before she had the next meeting in the NBC studios the next morning. And of course, before falling asleep, they had to celebrate their reunion.


	10. A first glimpse of Luxembourg

**The first glimpse of Luxembourg**

After having breakfast together, Miley left the mansion to lead further negotiations about her part in The Voice. Hans had agreed with his friend Luc to pick them up at the airport around 3.20 pm. Miley would join them later in the evening, and they would take it from there.

Before she could leave though, Hans was holding her back:

"Just wait a second, I got something for you"

He took a bundle of keys from his pocket and gave it to her:

"Take this. Like that, you don't have to stay down at the gate every time and wait till I open it for you. Gate opener and door key, like that you can come in any time you want to"

"Are you sure you want to give this to me?"

"Um, why not? I mean, I want you to come here as often as possible. Oh, and just in case you want to spend a quiet evening and have some time for yourself and I wouldn't be here, the keys for the beach house are also there."

Miley just looked at him, gave him a hug and said:

"Thank you, that really means a lot to me. In my relationship with Liam, even after all these years, I never had a key to his house"

"I suppose I could say I'm sorry to hear that but… to be honest, I'm actually pretty glad he messed it up like that."

"Haha, trust me, meanwhile I feel the same. Two weeks ago, I couldn't imagine that would even be possible. Ok, I really gotta go now, I'll see you tonight"

When she was gone, Hans thought about how thankful he really was that Liam didn't appreciate how lucky he was to have Miley. And he had no clue how it was even possible to lie to her and cheat on such a wonderful girl.

At 3:20 am, he arrived at the airport, waiting for his friends to arrive. Luc had really become pretty close to him, but he didn't know his girlfriend Sabrina that well yet, he only saw her a couple of times when he was attending one of Luc's basketball games. It took about another 25 minutes until they came out and he was able to welcome them. After some hugs and kisses (for Sabrina), he took her suitcase and they went to his car (this time, he chose to use his Audi S8) and they headed off for the Hollywood Hills. When they arrived at the mansion, his two friends had trouble to believe their eyes. They both knew that Hans earned quite a lot of money during his playing career, but a lot of his friends didn't realize how wealthy he really was, until they visited him in the US. Back in Luxembourg, he had a pretty luxurious but definitely not out of the norm lifestyle, with a penthouse in his hometown, 2 cars and no fancy hobbies.

"Wow, this is definitely better than any hotel" Sabrina said impressed. "Um, am I actually allowed to post some pictures on Instagram about this, or is your house like a big secret?"

"Haha, feel free to post as many as you like. What hotel did you plan to stay at anyway?"

"The Holiday Inn Downtown. One of my friends father has a travel agency and they have specialized in trips to the US, he was able to get us a good deal"

"Holiday Inn Downtown? Um, you know that it takes you at least 90 minutes from there to get to the beach?" Hans was surprised, he actually thought that after Vegas, they intended to relax a few days on the beach before flying back to Europe.

"You see?" Sabrina whispered. „I told you from the beginning that they had no clue"

"Yeah, I know. At least after Vegas this was pretty clear"

"Oh boy…I'm afraid to ask but…what happened in Vegas?"

"They booked us a room in the Hardrock Hotel. I mean, the hotel was really nice, but about 3 miles from the strip, which meant every single day walk for 6 miles or pay a cab. Especially this morning, it was pretty hard to drag a certain very drunk young man back to the hotel" the girl explained, while she gave her boyfriend a pretty tense stare.

This one replied a bit embarrassed:" I told you, the sandwich or something must have been bad"

"Hahaha, God, I really missed that". Hans laughed as he patted his friend on the back. "What about tonight, any special wishes?"

"Honestly, just get something to eat and chill. Vegas was a bit exhausting after all. But anyway, where's your girlfriend, I thought she would be here?"

"Oh, right. She's still in the NBC Studios that produce The Voice US, she might end up to be one of the judges next season."

"What? The Voice? Are you serious? God, I love that show. Does that mean that you might meet Adam Levine?" Apparently, Sabrina was a huge Maroon 5 fan.

"So, who is your girlfriend?" Luc was pretty curious now. "If she's gonna be part of such a show, it should be someone famous, I suppose?"

Hans smiled and said: "You know what, just bring your stuff to your room and settle in, take a shower, whatever you may need. I don't want to kill the suspense"

"Oh, that's cruel" Sabrina whispered to herself as they followed Hans who guided them to their bedroom.

A bit later, Luc came back out to the seating area to join Hans who had made himself comfortable at the pool bar.

"Everything's fine with the room?"

"Are you kidding? I've never seen such a luxurious room in my life. I don't even want to know how much you had to pay for that shower. I don't think we're gonna see Sabrina for another hour at least"

"Haha, yeah, I have to admit, I have some kind of weakness for nice bathrooms. Oh, any idea what you would like to have for dinner? I think the easiest would be to call a delivery"

"Uh, is it expensive around here? This trip turned out to be more expensive than we thought, we're a bit short right now. You already saved our lives by letting us stay here."

"Oh come on, you're my guests, it's on me anyway. How about some sushi? Or what did you eat over the last days?"

"Mainly burgers and fast food, it would actually be great to have something…normal again"

„Alright. I just text my girl to see what she wants. She's vegetarian, if that helps you in any way" Hans said to Luc.

"Alright, I'm gonna google famous people who are vegetarian and see what comes up"

"You can limit your search on female people thought"

It really took another hour before Sabrina joined them. She found the boys sitting at the bar, surprisingly watching a basketball game on tv, enjoying a bottle of Whiskey that Hans brought over from the house.

"I see, you're doing pretty well without me here. When is your girlfriend coming, I could need some female support"

"Hm, she should be here in about 30 minutes. But just take a quick look at the sushi menu, then I'm gonna make a phone call to give up our order"

"Sushi? Isn't that a bit expensive?" Sabrina asked Luc.

„It is. But he's determined to invite us, I wasn't able to stop him"

"Thank God, I just can't eat anymore fast food"

After she chose her sushi, she said she would take a look at the rest of the house until her support would arrive.

After Hans and Luc declared this as being a great idea (they had reached the 3rd glass of Whiskey by now), they turned their attention back to the basketball game.

When Sabrina came back, she said with a devilish grin:

"I'm probably gonna make a lot of people very jealous if I post these pictures. Especially Justin and his girlfriend will be shocked, since they always brag about spending their holidays only in the best 5 star hotels. They can't even dream about staying in a house like this".

Hans thought that this was actually pretty cruel.

"Like I said, don't hold yourself back"

They kept talking a bit about Luc and Sabrina's trip when Miley showed up around 7:15 pm.

"There you are" Hans said and got up to greet his girlfriend. "How was your day, did everything go fine?"

"Long and exhausting, but we cleared all the details, looks like I'm gonna be a judge in the next season of The Voice" Miley said proud and gave Hans a kiss. "Well, looks like you had a good time with the Whiskey" she moaned.

"We only had 2 glasses" Hans replied defensively.

"I'm just playing with you. Come on, introduce me to your friends"

So Hans introduced his girlfriend, of course firstly to Sabrina, who lost it a little bit:

"Oh my God, you're Miley Cyrus"

Miley, who was used to such reactions from people, smilingly thought about how nervous she was before meeting Will, so she reacted very calmly:

"Simply Miley is good enough"

After that, she got introduced to Luc, and had to tell them everything about how the negotiations with The Voice went. The most important question for Sabrina seemed to be though if she already met Adam Levine, which made Luc a little nervous:

"I hope I don't have to be worried?"

"What? Noooo, of course not…maybe a little"

"He is really sweet though, why do you think I agreed to take part in the show?" Miley smiled, while giving Hans a nasty look.

„Hey, if we're bothering you, you just have to tell us and invite your cute and sweet Adam to come over" Now it was Hans turn to get a bit grumpy.

"Haha, come on, you know that we wouldn't trade you for anyone else in the world" said Miley as she cuddled herself against Hans.

Finally the sushi arrived, and they made themselves comfortable outside at the table near the swimming pool. While Hans and Luc were talking about sports and Las Vegas, the two girls seemed to hit it from the start and they were talking nonstop. They stayed outside till 1.30 am, talking, eating, drinking and of course, they had to pose for some pictures. At this point, Hans had to step in briefly and make clear that Sabrina didn't post these pictures anywhere as long as their relationship wasn't made public.

"Of course. Do you already have a plan on how to do that?"

Hans turned to Miley and said: "Good question…not really. Or do you have an idea?"

"Actually, yes. I still wanted to talk to you about it. I might ask Ellen if she's able to put me in her show in one of the next days. She was pretty much the only one who always stood behind me over the last months and years, no matter what I did or said, she was always there and tried to protect me. I think it would be only fair if she was the first one to get the news"

"Sounds like a plan. And you really want to do this on your own, or you want me to join you?"

"I think it would be better if I go alone. I can't expect you to be there all the time to hold my hand."

„Up to you. But if you have the slightest doubt, you just tell me and I'll be there"

Luc and Sabrina went to the guestroom shortly after, while Miley and Hans stayed outside for a bit.

"And you're really sure about doing this on your own? I mean, we can't know how people will react to this". Hans was still a bit worried that Miley wanted to reveal the news without him.

"I'm definitely nervous, but not just because of this. I received a request for a performance in Washington, for the student movement #marshforourlives. They expect more than 100.000 people, mainly students, but also a lot of VIP's. And I have no idea which song I should perform. Most of all, I have no idea how people will react when they see me. I can imagine better things than being booed by such a huge crowd."

Hans got off his chair, went over to the couch under the patio and said:

"Just come here for a second"

Without arguing, Miley went over to Hans who dragged her on the couch and put his arms around her:

"Let's see. Party in the USA might be the wrong choice for such an event, just like Wrecking Ball…and I don't even want to start about your hip hop experiments…"

"Hey, that album sold more than a million copies"

"Haha, but still…what about The Climb?"

"Seriously? First of all, I haven't performed this song for at least 4 years now, and second, if I choose this song, I can just as well put my Hannah Montana outfit back on"

"Or you could look at it from a different point of view. It's a great song, even though it's from a Disney movie. It just tells a story that fits perfectly to this subject, especially to give these kids some hope. And there's one thing you shouldn't underestimate. 90% of the people who will be there are students, and a lot of them grew up with Hannah. Look, I can understand you're scared that everybody will only see the sweet little Hannah before their eyes when you sing this song, but just give it a thought. These kids are in a period of their lives where they start to become young adults, they won't stick to Hannah forever but they are developing, just like their taste of music will. But no matter how old you become, you never forget about your childhood heroes. So by taking Hannah's song and make it to Miley's, you can show the whole nation that you're not this sweet and innocent girl anymore, but you've come to accept that Hannah is a part of who you are today, and that you're proud of this part of your life, and proud of the fans she has reached"

„That could really be a huge opportunity I suppose"

"It could. When are you supposed to be there?"

"Next Sunday"

"Oh shit, that's really bad timing. I got a call from one of my oldest friends back in Luxembourg this afternoon, I got invited to a bachelor party. I'm supposed to fly next Saturday, and the wedding is scheduled two weeks later"

Miley looked at him, and he could see the sadness in her eyes.

"So I have to go to Washington without you? And you won't be back for another two or three weeks? I don't know if I'm ready for this"

"Well, I don't know about the two or three weeks, that might depend a bit on how busy you are. I was actually hoping you could join me, or at least come to Luxembourg for a couple of days. I mean, I do need a date for the wedding. Maybe you could arrange to fly over from Washington?"

A careful smile appeared on Miley's face and she asked a bit surprised:

"You really want me at that wedding?"

"What kind of question is that? Of course I want to, but not only because of the wedding. You still have to meet my parents and the rest of the family, my friends…my home…it would mean a lot to me."

"You're really serious about this, aren't you? I still have to get used to this. But if you want me to be there, I'm gonna try everything to make it possible. So the wedding will be Saturday in two weeks?"

"Exactly. It would be great if you could make it…it's about time I can show off with my famous superstar girlfriend"

"Show off or shock?"

Hans had to smile, this might actually be a rightful question.

„Haha, show off, definitely. We'll keep the shocking part for later. Shouldn't we go to sleep? It's getting late…"

„Can we stay just 5 more minutes? It's so nice outside"

„With pleasure. But only 5 minutes"

This plan didn't work out of course, and when Sabrina came out at 8.30 am, she found them both on the couch, still sleeping.

"How sweet, did you spend the whole night out here?"

Hans woke up and it took him a second to realize why he wasn't in his bed.

"What? What time is it?"

„8.30"

„Ok, that was definitely not planned like this. Hey, sleepy, get up" He was shaking Miley pretty roughly to wake her up.

About 45 minutes later, they were sitting together at the table, having breakfast and making plans for the day. Miley had some appointments during the day, and if everything worked out, she would join them again in the evening. Hans himself would be the guide for his guests and show them the LA classics, starting with the beach areas. Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Malibu…in fact, they could just stay there for the evening and have a barbecue.

Luc seemed to be a bit surprised:

„Are you really allowed to just have a private barbecue at a public beach here?"

"I have no clue. I was planning to do it at the beach house"

"Beach house? You have a beach house here in Malibu?"

"Just a small one with 4 bedrooms"

Sabrina was looking at Luc and said with a big grin:

"I think, we gonna spend a lot of vacations in LA in the future"

Hans replied amused:

"Haha, you're always welcome, you just have to tell me a bit in advance "

Miley left shortly after and Hans went with her to the car to say goodbye. He kissed her and went back to his friends to start his new job as a tourist guide.


	11. The secret is revealed

**11\. The Secret is revealed**

Hans took his friends to Bubba Gump, which is locatedl on the Santa Monica Pier for lunch. It was probably the most famous pier in the world, next to Pier 39 in San Francisco…it was definitely the most photographed one. Everybody knew the postcards with the theme park that seemed to stand in the ocean. Luc and Sabrina quickly figured out that having someone famous as a guide had it perks. You never had to stay in line, you received special conditions and were treated like a star, so the few fans who really came to ask for a selfie or a signature didn't really bother them.

Also at Bubba Gump's, a restaurant chain that was named after the movie Forrest Gump, they had no problem getting a table right away, even though the waiting time was announced to be at least 45 minutes. Hans didn't really like it to be treated differently than other people, but after all this walking around at the beaches, he was starving. After they gave up their order and waited for the food, Luc asked him:

"Ok, how did you end up with Miley? I somehow would have rather expected someone like Maria Sharapova or Jennifer Lawrence."

So Hans told the whole story again, but tried not to tell too much about Miley's recent problems. But at least Sabrina seemed to be pretty much up to date when it came to star gossip:

"To be honest, she's very different from what I would have expected. Everything I heard or read was about scandals, parties, affairs, drugs…um, sorry, I didn't mean for it to sound so negative…"

From one second to another, her head turned red like a tomato.

„Haha, don't worry, I already had this discussion with her father. And it's true, she was going through a rough patch. Due to her own mistakes, bad management, false friends, that's a long list. And to tell the truth, I really wasn't sure in the beginning if I really should start this relationship and help her out of this misery. Oh well, all it took to answer this question was one date. But believe me, before this PETA photo shoot, my opinion of her was exactly the same"

And just when they were done talking about Miley, Hans received a call and it was, of course, his girlfriend:

"Hey, is everything fine?" Hans asked surprised.

"More or less. I just got a call from Ellen, her guest for today's show has cancelled, and she asked if I could jump in. We're supposed to meet in an hour and discuss our interview. It comes a bit out of the blue, but if it's ok for you, I would like to go. At least we wouldn't have to worry anymore if people might see us together"

"Well, if it's really no problem for you to pull this through. I can't wait for the whole world to know that you're officially off the market"

"Haha, ok, I'll call her to confirm my presence. Oh boy, so we really are making it official now…"

"Don't worry, everything will be fine. You want me to pick you up after the show?"

"No, you don't have to, Ellen has a driver that will bring me to the beach house"

"Great. At least I know now what to watch on tv this afternoon…"

So today was the day where Miley would reveal her new relationship in front of millions of viewers. On one side, he really had a lot of respect for his girl that she wanted to do this on her own, on the other side, he would have felt more comfortable if he was there with her. He didn't care at all about what the public might say about this relationship, or how people would react. But he wasn't sure about Miley. Nobody could tell what kind of reactions they would provoke, but he was pretty sure there would be everything, from hateful comments over rumors that the whole relationship was just staged for PR reasons to approval. Miley was, despite all her scandals, still one of the most successful and famous young artists in the US, if not in the world, Hans was, especially in LA, very popular due to his basketball career. Not to forget about the fact that he was, unintentionally, one of the most powerful movie producers in Hollywood and co-founder of one of the biggest American IT companies of all time. He was a bit afraid that there would be a lot of haters once the news was out. But they would find out soon enough.

Since the Ellen Degeneres show, one of the most popular talk shows in the US, was aired at 4 pm, they just went to the supermarket to get everything for their barbecue and headed over to Malibu. If everything went according to plan, Miley would arrive around 8 pm.

When they arrived at the beach house, Luc just gave Hans a sarcastic look:

"A small beach house, I see. It's really not much bigger than uncle Tom's cabin"

"Hey, all I said was that it's a little smaller than the mansion"

That's when Sabrina got involved:

"Yeah yeah, doesn't matter. Now let us in, the pictures don't shoot themselves"

Hans opened the door with a smile, and again, his guests were in awe about all the luxury you could fit into such a house. Hans had no idea if the inventory really was the top of the tops, he just hired an interior designer and tried to explain him what he had in mind. With these information, the designer presented him a couple of different options, and Hans simply chose what he liked the most.

After they had put all the stuff for tonight away and Hans showed them the house (while Sabrina was busy taking tons of pictures), it was about time to switch on the television. Hans started to feel a bit nervous, he was really curious about how people were going to react.

Meanwhile, just a few miles away, Miley wasn't feeling any better. She was sitting backstage, waiting to be called to go out into the studio. She already talked briefly with Ellen how she was intending to lead the interview, and also told her that she should be prepared that the news would provoke some hefty reactions in social media. Ellen's words were more or less the following:

"Listen Miley, you have to be aware what's going to happen today. The young, naughty brat who received so much love from the American people over the last years, but did everything to offend them and who had…let's say a couple of scandals, somehow manages to catch the, after Prince Harry got married, most wanted bachelor in the US, if not the whole world. One of the most popular NBA players of all time, good looking, well-mannered and nice, fairytale rich…every young woman in Hollywood, single or not, would love to put her claws in his back. I can't guarantee how the reactions in the studio will be, but I'm confident that we can manage to get a positive one. And, what I'm going to tell you now is simply my own opinion. I'm very happy for you, because after everything you've been through this last years, you deserve a little luck. And I'm gonna jump into anyone's face who says something else"

Miley looked thankfully at Ellen and squeezed her hand. Ellen Degeneres was 59 years old and started her career as a Stand-up comedian and actor. Her natural talent got noticed by several producers, and in the mid-nineties, she got to host her own afternoon talk show, a show which had become the most popular show in the country, besides the Late-Night classics like The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, or the shows of Conan O'Brien or Jimmy Kimmel. After she outed herself, she had to fight many wars to establish herself in the entertainment business, and she was able to understand what Miley had to endure at her young age. What's more, she always had a great amount of respect before the fact that the young pop star never failed to, even during her biggest scandals and breakdowns, fight and stand up for the LGBT movement. That's why Ellen never hesitated to defend the young girl when she got dragged through every newspaper and website again. There was one time where she threw one of her guests, a so-called reality tv star, out of the show after she called Miley a heroin addicted part-time prostitute. Because of the age difference, you could say that Ellen was almost like a big sister to Miley.

While she was deep in her thoughts, someone knocked on the door, and when she opened, it was one of Ellen's assistants to guide her into the studio. She took a deep breath, and followed the young woman.

Even Ellen was more nervous than usual, because she was sure that Miley didn't realize yet the impact that the revealing of this relationship would cause. She knew Hans personally, she even had him over for dinner a few times, so she experienced first hand, how easy it was to forget what he represented. He was, together with Will Smith, the most beloved duo of Hollywood, probably of the whole United States, he was incredibly rich and one of the most powerful people in the world, if he intended to. Because of his sweet and nice behavior that he usually had, many people simply forgot in his presence what position he was in. She really liked him a lot, and she was sure, if there was anyone who could bring Miley back on track, it would be him. She was also convinced that, even if the whole nation would react in a negative way to this relationship, he wouldn't care at all and stand up for Miley, because that's just who he was.

When she received a sign that the commercial break would be over in 10 seconds, she tried to pull herself back together and announced her guest:

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for staying with us, and I'm very happy to present you my guest for today. She is one of the most talented young artists in the US, if not in the whole world, and over the last years, she has caused some…let's call it…controversy. Please give a big applause for Miss Miley Cyrus."

The audience had of course been informed beforehand that the planned guest, Kendall Jenner, had unexpectedly and on short notice canceled her appearance, but they had no idea who was gonna show up as a replacement. They were somewhat surprised, but still gave Miley a rather warm welcome, thankful to see someone famous at all.

Miley was just glad that most people reacted pretty positive when she came out. She gave Ellen a quick hug and sat down on the sofa while the moderator welcomed her:

"Miley, I'm surprised. No nude skin, no provocative gestures, you didn't even smoke a joint backstage…what's wrong?"

"Well, first of all, thanks for having me. And, what can I say, the last years were pretty…eventful, and I'm slowly realizing that my behavior during this time hasn't done me any good, but rather hurt me. And more importantly, that somewhere in these acts of rebellion against my Hannah Montana image, I completely lost myself and became someone I never wanted to be"

"Now, that sounds interesting. And this insight just came overnight, or what happened to you?"

"To be honest, I needed a very special person to tell me a few, pretty unpleasant, things about myself. From false friends to taking wrong decisions and acting in a self-destructive way, it included pretty much everything. And, contrary to all the occasions where my father tried to tell me the same things, this time it just sacked in"

"And what exactly do you mean when you say this time it just sacked in?"

"I realized that, no matter what I do, Hannah will always be a part of me. I'm not this sweet little girl I used to be in that Disney show anymore, but I'm also definitely not that person I tried to incorporate during the last years. I'm starting to learn that I should be proud of what Hannah has achieved, how many people she has touched and how many kids grew up having her as their role model. I surely am no angel, I don't think that anybody of us is perfect, but like I said, I'm out of this phase where I was convinced that I basically have to murder Hannah to be able to move on and being taken serious as a grown-up artist"

"That sounds very promising. One question that comes to my mind though, is: What makes a 16 or 17 year old girl use drugs, affairs and public scandals to rebel against her image?"

"A management that only cares about money, false friends, being naïve and stupid, there are many reasons"

This was new for Ellen, and she couldn't believe what she just heard.

"You want to tell me that your management advised you to consume drugs and alcohol, and sell this as a cool lifestyle to your fans?"

"Let's say, there were days where my manager paid attention that I didn't eat too much for lunch so I would get drunk faster on a party in the evening"

"And, where is this manager now, if I may ask?"

"Fired" was the short reply that Miley gave.

„I'm glad to hear that. And what about these so-called false friends, in what way did they influence you?"

"Well, to really change your image from being lovely and sweet to the cool, rebellious young woman, you have to hang out with the cool people and have fun. What I didn't notice was, that these people were only there when it was about making it on the front page of the gossip magazines, thanks to some new scandal. Every time I felt bad or had a tough time and was looking to get some support, I was being coldly ignored"

"No offense, but that sounds al a bit simplistic. Everybody's against me and tries to harm me. But what has been your role during this period?"

"Of course it's not that simple. I let myself get caught in this party and, let's call it Rock n'Roll lifestyle, and I took a ton of bad decisions. Most of all, I hurt a lot of people, unfortunately pretty much everyone that really cared about me and wanted only the best for me. I really hope that one day in the future I can redeem myself and earn their trust and love again. For now, I concentrate on finding out what I really want, and more importantly, who I really am, and this is still a long way to go"

"A way that you, hopefully, don't have to master all by yourself?"

"No, since last week, I don't have to anymore"

"So you're saying you're in a relationship again? After your break-up with Liam Hemsworth, you declared that you would never trust a man that much anymore to let him get close enough to you to be able to hurt you. I think we all remember the pictures of your public breakdown at a concert after it was made official that the two of you had ended your relationship"

"It's true, Liam has hurt me a lot. But, what can I say, I felt like I was drowning and finally someone came to save me. I didn't think it was possible, but yes, I am at a point where I'm ready to completely trust another person again"

"I suppose it was him who made you think about everything that happened over the last years?"

"Like I said, he told me some very unpleasant things about myself. When I told him that I had to change, that it was about not being only Miley anymore, he asked me a question I couldn't get out of my head. What's wrong with being Miley? This sounds very simple, and there's a bit more to it, but I just couldn't find an answer"

"And of course we all want to know, who is this guy who seemingly managed to tame the wildest young popstar in LA? Everything will be revealed after the break"

When the commercial break had started, there were a lot of discussions to be heard in the audience. This show didn't go like most of the people expected. Miley Cyrus, the spoiled brat that delivered scandal after scandal for years now, seemed completely changed, and was in a new relationship for over a week now, and nobody had noticed anything about it. You could feel the suspense that was present in the studio, and Ellen knew that the wild speculations on social media already started. And still, until now, it went way better than she hoped for, people were listening and fascinated from the story about this young woman that had to grow up in the spotlight, just to completely crash down, in front of the whole nation. And since she already knew the end of the story, Ellen knew it would cause an earthquake.

"How do you feel Miley? Everything's fine?"

"Yes, don't worry. To be honest, I will be so relieved when it's finally official"

Ellen said with a grin:

"Perfect. In that case, we'll let the bomb explode in a few minutes"

Shortly afterwards, the show went on. Ellen smiled to the cameras and greeted the viewers once more:

"Welcome back ladies and gentleman. We are here with our guest, Miley Cyrus, who will exclusively reveal in a few minutes the identity of her new boyfriend and what plans she has for the near future. But first of all, Miley, there are already some wild guesses on Twitter and Instagram about your potential partner. I'll give you a few names, and you can tell us if anyone was able to come up with the right person. So, first name that appears a lot…Justin Bieber. Miley, is it Justin Bieber?"

"Justin Bieber? God, no. I mean, nothing against Justin, but I already have enough problems on my own…"

For the first time today, the audience started clapping and laughing.

"Ok, next name on the list. Nick Jonas?"

"Nope"

"Orlando Bloom?"

"Uh, no, not my type. And I think Katy Perry would kill me…"

"Oh, now it's getting awkward, I have to mention this one: Hulk Hogan"

"Got me…"

"WHAT?"

„Haha, no. I love The Hulkster, but even I wouldn't be that crazy. And I already have a dad…"

"Ok, before we finally solve this question, what are your plans for the future?"

"I also have some news on this. Sunday, I will be in Washington D.C, to support the demonstration #marshforourlives. This summer, I will be one of the judges of The Voice and I plan on finally producing a new album"

„Well, that sounds like you got your life back on track?"

"I wouldn't go that far, but for the first time in 8 years, I can say that I'm really happy again"

"For the first time in 8 years…you know Miley, that sounds really sad coming from a 24 year old woman. Does that mean, you have been constantly miserable for the past 8 years?"

"Maybe not the whole time, that might be a bit over exaggerated, but let's say, I can't really remember too many happy days"

"Miley, before we reveal the secret, let me say this clearly in front of this audience and all the viewers across the country. You were the center of many controversies over the last years, sometimes because of your own misbehavior, a lot of times because people just abused you for your fame. You had to go through a lot for a girl of your age, and in my opinion, you deserve every bit of happiness that you might have right now, and I'm really glad that you seem to have found someone who supports you and gives you the strength you need"

"Thank you Ellen", Miley replied with watery eyes, and she got up to give a warm hug to her friend. And this was the one moment that made the audience forget about everything that happened over the last years and they let Miley back into their hearts. Everybody in the crowd was cheering as Americas formerly most beloved teenager and the talk show host lay in each other's arms.

"God, I didn't plan on getting that emotional. Ok Miley, last question before we reveal the big secret. What made you choose this unusual way to make your relationship public?"

"The other day, we were having dinner together with a couple that has been married for a long time now and who have a lot of experience living their lives publicly, and they advised us to take matters in our own hands, if we let the paparazzi "discover" us, people might think that everything is just staged and we would be looking for PR. What's more, we wanted to take the time to get to know each other better, and that's why we were kind of hiding for a while, and surprisingly, it worked out"

"So…are you ready?"

"Not really, but I don't think I have a choice now"

"Definitely not. Ladies and gentlemen, let me present you, Hollywood's newest glamourous couple"

A picture appeared on the big screen that was placed in the middle of the stage, and after a few seconds, the audience started booing.

Ellen showed a devilish grin as she said:

"And the second half of the picture will be revealed after our last short break"

During this commercial break, Miley had to smile:

"And people say that I'm the brat…"

"Oh come on, you have to build up the suspense, that's the whole point of entertainment. But the show will be over in a few minutes, which means we will show the picture right away, I'll ask you another two or three questions, you sing your song and that's it. Your driver is already waiting, so you can disappear without getting bothered. And whatever comes afterwards, I'm sure you'll get through it…together"

"Haha, I know. I somehow have a good feeling about this"

A few seconds later, the last part of the show was about to start.

"Welcome back to the final minutes of today's show. Now, we don't want to keep you waiting any longer, this is the complete picture of Miley Cyrus and her new, mysterious boyfriend"

Again, the picture appeared on the big screen, and slowly, the black half of it was getting revealed and after about 10 seconds, Hans could clearly be recognized. Miley was anxiously waiting for a reaction, and after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, the audience started to clap until it developed into a stormy applause and loud cheers. The young artist didn't even dare to dream about such a positive reaction and she couldn't prevent that a couple of tears were running down her cheeks.

"So…Jerome Hansen. Before we finish, you have to tell us one thing of course. How did you manage to catch the most wanted young bachelor in the US, if not in the whole world?"

Miley took a few seconds to pull herself together and answered:

"It started about two weeks ago, when both of us took part in a photo shoot for the animal rights organization PETA. We had a great chemistry right from the start, and for the first time in a while, I felt completely comfortable in the presence of another person. The following weekend, we met up in a night club in LA, where it happened that he told me all these…uncomfortable truths about myself. I actually did my very best to push him away from me that night, but he gave me a second chance which resulted in our first date"

"So let me ask my final question. How are 2 superstars like you spending their first date? It probably wasn't something like having dinner and going to the movies, that would have been all over the news"

„Actually, he picked me up at home, together with his former foster dog, and took me to a beach house in Malibu. We were making pasta after an old family recipe he had from his Italian aunt, took a walk on the beach, watched the sunset and we were just sitting on the terrace for hours, with a glass of wine, talking and enjoying each other's company. It was probably the corniest date I ever had…and it surely was the most beautiful day since I was 17 years old and had to stop with Hannah Montana"

The description of their first date was melting the hearts of the audience, at least of the female part. You could hear some Ahs and Awws, and some of the women were already telling their respective partner what they were expecting from them in the near future.

"And that's it for today. Like I said Miley, I wish you only the best, and next time, I expect to see both of you sitting on this couch together. But I don't think that the people here will let you leave without having performed a song, and you have chosen to present us an old classic by your godmother Dolly Parton, probably her biggest hit, Jolene"

Miley went over to the stage where the band was already waiting for her, and as soon as the music started to play, she felt like last week in Nashville. She realized again how much this kind of music and these performances meant to her, and how much she had missed this aspect of her life. But also the audience was excited, and a lot of them showed that they knew the lyrics pretty well. The song lasted for about 4 minutes, and when it was over, Miley went to the front row to thank them for the applause, but also for the way they reacted to her new relationship. It was one woman who hugged her and touched her in particular, when she whispered in her ear:

"It feels good to have you back"


	12. First reactions

**First reactions**

Well, that certainly went way better than Hans would have imagined. Most of all, it was the positive reaction of the audience that surprised him, and he was sure that Miley was able to regain a lot of sympathies during this show. He was also very grateful for Ellen's kind words, and he made a mental note that he would have to invite her and her wife Portia for dinner in the near future. But he also knew that there would be a lot of other, negative reactions, some of Miley's competitors in the entertainment business wouldn't hold back with their opinions. But the only thing that really mattered right now was that, from tonight on, he and Miley were officially a couple, which still sounded a bit unreal to him.

It didn't even take 2 minutes before he received a first text message, coming from Will:

"From Jada: Tell him that I wish them all the best, and that I'm really proud of Miley. From me: Let the show begin "

"Haha, thanks, but I think I'm still gonna wait a little bit before I check the comments on social media"

Luc and Sabrina also thought that the revealing went rather well. Especially Sabrina felt like being in a movie, right in the middle of Hollywood's scandals and dramas…she couldn't wait telling her friends back home about this trip, and finally she would be able to post all these pictures that she took with Miley and Hans.

A few minutes later, Hans was having a drink with Luc to relax a bit, while Sabrina said she would wait for Miley to come back, she could probably use a glass with a friend. Hans was somehow delighted to hear Sabrina use the word friend, since he knew that Miley didn't have too many left after she kind of broke up with her old girls gang. It could only be good for her to have some "normal" girlfriends, like the young Luxembourgish woman, in her life.

Meanwhile, Hans already started to put some meat (and vegetables, and something really weird called Tofu) on the grill while his friends took care of the table, and they were waiting for the star of the day to arrive.

Shortly after, the doorbell rang and Miley was finally there (she was so stressed that she forgot to take her keys with her). Hans opened the door and gave her a big hug. They staid like that for a minute and Miley just enjoyed his smell and this feeling of complete security.

"Hey, how are you? I hope it wasn't too bad?"

"No. All in all I didn't expect that it would turn out so great. What about you? Did you already get any reactions?"

"I actually wanted to check the internet after dinner, just come in and let's enjoy the evening a bit first. And…I'm so proud of you and how you handle this whole situation"

Miley just squeezed his hand thankfully before they went in, where Sabrina immediately rushed over to Miley and gave her a hug. Well, it really looks like there's a friendship about to be created, Hans thought to himself.

Finally, they turned their attention to the most important part of the evening (at least for Hans) and they started to eat. Sabrina wanted to know everything, how Miley was feeling, if she was relieved etc…Hans and Luc turned to their usual subjects and talked mainly about sports. After they had finished their dinner and sat down with a few drinks on the terrace, Hans said:

"Alright, I think I've had enough alcohol to be able to check the social media channels now"

Miley replied:

"Oh boy, that could get ugly…"

"You really think it's gonna be that bad? I mean, the people in the studio were pretty happy about the news…" Sabrina seemed to be surprised.

"I think that there are rather a lot of wannabe VIP's and third class stars who will try to get some attention out of this. And the more extreme your statement is, the more attention you get. Besides, over the last years it has become some sort of thing to beat Miley down in public"

"Well, partially deserved, to be honest" It looked like the young artist really learned a few things over the last weeks.

But ok, there would be some reactions, either they liked it or not, so they could just get over with it and take a look at some of them. Hans took his smartphone and googled the last news about Miley Cyrus, and, without surprise, all the major online magazines and bloggers had already published their opinions. While most of them were surprisingly neutral, some of them were pretty hefty. The first one that caught Hans attention was a Tweet and Instagram post from Kylie Jenner (which was a bit ironic, since all of this was only possible because she canceled her appearance on the show). Hans didn't really understand the reasoning behind this whole post, but Kylie seemed to be worried about her good friend Taylor Swift:

"It doesn't matter why you thought it would be a good idea to publicly announce this made up relationship, Taylor and Tom will always be Hollywood's most glamourous couple #TeamTaylor #MileyCyrusBitch"

Well, that was something he could live with. He didn't care at all if people saw them as a glamourous couple or just two completely normal persons, as long as Miley was with him. What's more, it seemed pretty funny to him that no other than Kylie Jenner was talking about a fake relationship, since she was part of the notorious Kardashian family, that gave up their whole privacy for a reality tv show and was part of Taylor Swifts famous girl gang…who was, like everybody knew, an absolute expert when it came to marketing your relationship…or producing a new song or whole album once they broke up. Her momentarily boyfriend, Tom Hiddlestone, gained quite some fame thanks to his participation in the Marvel movies in his role as Loki, but the whole world could see that he wasn't much more than a good looking accessoire for the pop star when a photo was published all around the world where he was seen wearing a Team Taylor t-shirt, just like the rest of her girl gang when she was celebrating her birthday.

The next article that jumped to his eye came from the blogger Perez Hilton, and he couldn't believe what he was reading. A bit shocked, he asked Miley:

"Did you ever have problems with this attention whore who calls himself Perez Hilton?"

"The self-called blogger of the stars? No, why?"

"Well, I don't really know if I should read this out aloud…"

"Just do it, otherwise I will read it myself"

"Fine. So, I'm just quoting: This news have definitely gathered a lot of attention. Hollywood has its new couple, according to Ellen DeGeneres, a couple of dreams. I prefer to call them Beauty and the Beast, only that the roles are inversed. How on earth did this untalented, ugly frog looking Miley Cyrus manage to get her claws into the most wanted bachelor of our whole generation? And most of all, why does HE get involved with this immature wannabe pop star? Probably the desperate try of an aging sports star to not let his fame completely fade away. In my eyes, there would have been a lot of better options out there to accomplish this task, but he decided to go with the rebellious, childish drug wrecked former teen star. I promise you, my loyal fans, not to rest until I found out what might be the reasons for this rather surprising alliance. To use the words of a very dear friend of mine, #TeamTaylor #MileyCyrusBitch"

This was followed by a very detailed list that contained every single scandal and some rumours that Miley was involved with over the last decade, as well as a rather creative interpretation of her relationship to Liam Hemsworth.

The following user comments were not really pro Miley either, but what could you expect from people that followed such a crappy blog? What he could see though was the effect that this pretty aggressive article seemed to have on Miley. Sabrina seemed to have noticed the same thing and put her arm around her friend.

"Looks like I need to have a serious talk with this Perez Hilton in the next days" Hans said in a threatening tone.

Luc replied:

"I don't think that would change anything. The internet already seems to be over flooded by these hashtags, you won't be able to stop this anyway."

It looked like there were already tens of thousands of people using this hashtag, and there were a lot of famous people amongst them: Taylor Swift herself, the Kardashians, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Lindsay Lohan (which showed everybody how much her friendship to Miley really meant to her) etc…but surprisingly, there were also a lot of encouraging posts, mostly from normal people and fans, and especially a lot of young people who were just thrilled that their childhood hero Miley seemed to be back.

Hans went over to Sabrina to ask if she and Luc could give him a few minutes with his girlfriend and sat down with Miley:

"Hey, you're ok?"

"I'm fine, more or less. I mean, I expected some hostilities, but I was hoping to get some support from people of the show business, that I considered being my friends. God, I bet you already regret the day you were giving me a second chance"

"Now, that's a thought you gonna get out of your head as quick as possible. Have you already forgotten what I promised you? When the whole world is against you, I have your back and keep everything away from you. And that still counts. I don't give a shit about what these self-proclaimed social media stars, or wannabe pop stars think about this relationship, the only thing that matters is for you to be able to smile and be happy again. So, come on now, show me this sweet smile of yours, there's a reason they used to call you Smiley…"

Hans looked Miley in the eyes, with a big grin in his face, that she couldn't help herself and had to smile:

"I really don't know how many times I have to repeat it, but I suppose I still have to get used to having someone like you"

"No need to hurry. If things are getting too bad, we're just gonna flee on some deserted island and throw our phones into the ocean."

"Haha, as long as I have you on my side, nobody's gonna chase me out of this city"

"That's my girl" said Hans and kissed his girlfriend.

A few minutes later, Sabrina and Luc came back out, and the Luxembourgish girl immediately took care of Miley again. Hans was checking his phone and noticed that he had received a great number of text messages. The only one he checked was the one he got from Will, he didn't really feel like spending time now to read through all of them. When he saw the message though, he didn't really know what it was supposed to mean:

"Hey, like I see you made it on the front page again. I hope your girl is coping well with all the attention you're getting. This is one of the moments I told you about, now's the time she needs you the most and you have to take care of her. So I hope you're sitting somewhere together, laughing and making fun of these stupid comments. PS: If Miley should need, despite your overwhelming presence, some encouragement, you should take a look at Jada's Twitter or Instagram account, she couldn't keep her thoughts for herself."

Hans had no idea what to expect, but he opened up the said Instagram account (Twitter was way too complicated for him), and when he realized what Will exactly meant, he had to make sure he didn't get too emotional:

"To all the Perez Hiltons in this world, you must have a very ugly and pathetic life. No talent whatsoever, no success, jealous, stupid and arrogant. For your information, this ugly, frog looking girl is one of the most talented and gifted young artists in the world, a fantastic and beautiful young woman and I'm proud and honored to call her myfriend. Miley, don't let anyone ever tell you that you're not good enough, don't let anyone ever intimidate you. Will and I, we know the truth and we'll always be there for you. And to Kylie Jenner, grow up, this ain't about some stupid competition, this is about feelings. Miley, stay strong and just enjoy the time you have together. I am #TeamMiley"

Once more, Will and Jada had proved how much they valued the friendship with Hans, and also the sincerity of Jada's words to Miley after they had dinner with the Smiths. He didn't say a word but just gave his phone to Miley, who couldn't prevent her eyes filling with tears when she read the post. She surely didn't expect that kind of support from her new friend.

So the evening ended on a surprisingly positive note, and after they had taken one last drink to calm down a bit, they headed back to Hans mansion. Miley would spend the night with her father, since he was desperate to know how his little girl was feeling after all this. He was waiting close to the front door, and before saying goodbye to Miley, Hans had a few words with his (hopefully) future father in law:

"Hey, how's she holding up? That was pretty ugly from what I've heard"

"Pretty well I think. But she still might need some fatherly support. I think what hit her the most was this article or blog or whatever you call it nowadays from this Perez Hilton"

"Yeah, I read that one too. If I should ever run into this guy…or thing…I have no idea what's gonna happen. It doesn't matter how many mistakes Miley has made in the past, nobody calls my daughter an ugly, drugged prostitute and gets away with it"

Hans answered with a smile:

"Oh boy, I definitely don't wanna be in his place when Billy Ray Cyrus starts the hunt"

„Haha, would be better for you. But seriously, thank you for all the support you gave Miley over the last two weeks, especially today. I really start to feel happy about the fact that PETA chose you for the shooting with my daughter."

"You might not believe it, but I'm pretty happy about it too"

Billy Ray started to grin:

"And you really don't wanna come? You have my blessing to stay for the night…the couch is really comfortable"

"Thanks, but I'll pass. I don't want to leave my friends on their own, they only stay for a couple of days, and they probably imagined their time in LA a little bit different"

"Well…not everybody gets an exclusive insight on Hollywood's newest love stories and scandals. I'm sure that counts for something"

He laughed as he gave Hans a quick hug while Miley got in the car, and they drove back home. Hans and his guests were also pretty tired after a long day, so they headed straight to their bedrooms…Sabrina, of course, after she took another long shower.


	13. A Golden Morning

**A Golden Morning**

Hans got up pretty early the next morning, he didn't sleep too well after all the excitement from the day before. So he treated himself with a nice big breakfast outside at the pool and he started to reply to the countless text messages that he got. Most of his friends and family also got completely surprised by yesterday's events, but the tone of the messages was very friendly. Most of them contained the same joke though: Really? YOU have a girlfriend? Even if it was meant in a nice way, it got a bit old after he had to read it for the 20th time. Although, deep inside, he found it quite amusing that people were really that surprised.

Since the plan was that Miley would come over around 12 am, he decided to take a little sunbath, since he didn't really had anything else to do. He was just about to fall asleep when Sabrina came running out, unable to hide her excitement.

"Hey. Have you checked the internet already to see what people are writing about you and Miley?"

Hans smiled as he replied:

"No, I didn't want to ruin my day that early"

"Maybe you should. Trust me, your day won't get any worse because of it"

Hans wasn't convinced at all, but she made him curious.

"Just open your Instagram and check the most popular hashtags"

"Oh yes, sure, right away. As soon as someone explains to me how on earth that works"

"Jesus, for a so-called superstar, you're surprisingly incompetent when it comes to social media accounts…"

So with Sabrina's help, he was checking the most popular hashtags of the last 24 hours, and he had to admit…this day definitely seemed to take a turn for the better.

Miley finally arrived a bit after 12 am and found the 3 of them sitting outside, laughing and joking.

"Well, I'm glad that at least one of us is in a good mood…" she said when Hans got up.

"Oh wow, someone's a bit grumpy today…what happened?"

"Don't ask. Hundreds of interview requests, the articles from yesterday, and I think on my way here I was even chased by a helicopter"

"Sounds like fun. But, since you mention the articles and comments from yesterday, I suppose you haven't checked the latest ones from today yet?"

"No, my day is already bad enough…"

Still not convinced, Miley sat down next to Hans and took a look at his I-pad. And just like him, she couldn't believe her eyes, and she spent the next 45 minutes reading one Instagram post after the other. But what actually happened?

Somehow, Miley and Hans were convinced that the posts and blogs from Kylie Jenner and Perez Hilton would spread out over the next days and the popular Miley bashing would celebrate a huge revival. What they didn't expect was Jada's reaction to this, especially not the havoc this would cause. The first person to share Jada's post on her own profile was, to Miley's big surprise, Selena Gomez. Miley and Selena started their careers together in the Disney Club, and they were very close in younger years. When they were growing up and started their careers as singers and actors, this friendship came to a crushing end, and what followed was a pretty nasty confrontation on Twitter and in the printed medias. That's why Miley was so touched when she read the text of Selena's comment:" I know, Miley and me have taken different roads in our lifes, but I never stopped to admire her for the talent she has, her passion for music and the strength and courage she has shown over the last days. Even though our friendship has suffered a bit over the last years, I wish you all the best and I am so happy that you find yourself back at a point where you are able to trust and love another person again. I am #TeamMiley"

Miley was deeply moved as she read the kind words of her former friend, who positioned herself publicly against some of the most influential young women in the US, most of all against her ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber, who was one of the first to share the hashtag MileyCyrusBitch.

But Selena wasn't the only one who came to Miley's defense. And, in contrast to yesterday, where most of the post came from trash or B celebrities (maybe except for Justin, Taylor and Katy), this was like a Who is Who list of the music and movie industry. Among the first people to show their support for Miley were her new The Voice colleagues, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton. With growing excitement, Miley was reading the comments of the celebrities that had shared Jada's post:

Adam Levine: I can't wait to work with this overly talented young lady, Miley, stay strong and keep your head up, I'll see you in the summer. I am TeamMiley

Blake Shelton: I'm looking forward to finally meet this young gifted woman who has country music in her blood. Anyone who claims that she has no talent only outs himself as a complete noob, and I really hope I get to perform a couple of duets with her in the show. I am #TeamMiley PS: Of course this only counts if you team up against Adam with me

Will Smith: Perez who? It's always funny to observe how people with no talent whatsoever try to hate on others to gain a little attention. Miley, don't let idiots like that bring you down, and just in case…you know Hancock's number . I am TeamMiley

Dolly Parton: There are no words that can express how proud I am of my goddaughter. Miley, you can be assured that people love you, and no matter what happens, I'll be there for you. I am TeamMiley

Elton John: I always had a certain weakness for little rebels. Miley, you are an amazingly talented young woman with a bright future ahead of you, but nothing will compare to the time you get to spend with that one special person that owns your heart. Miley, it's time to show the world your smile again, it has been deeply missed. I am TeamMiley

Miley couldn't believe it, even her idol Elton John showed his support. And there were even more celebrities coming to the rescue, like Leonardo Di Caprio, Eminem, Bruce Willis, Johnny Depp, Pink, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Robbie Williams and, of course, Kobe Bryant and Ellen DeGeneres, and many more. The hashtag TeamMiley had been reposted more than 2 million times over the last 15 hours, completely crushing the numbers of the posts of Kylie Jenner and Perez Hilton. Miley was aware that the biggest part of this support was due to her relationship with Hans, but she couldn't avoid getting emotional:

"Wow, I never expected something like this…"

"You see, sometimes it pays off to have friends. But, quick change of subject, maybe we should go to Nobu's for lunch? Like that, the paparazzi can take some pictures…I mean, if you don't mind ending up on the front page of several newspapers?" Hans was looking at Sabrina as he came up with the idea.

"Seriously? Of course, that's gonna be fun"

"Haha, alright, I just give the restaurant a call, and then we can leave"

So Hans called the restaurant, and as soon as they realized who wanted to pass by for lunch, they were having a free table for them. So they all got dressed and drove down to Malibu where the restaurant was located. It was an Asian style restaurant, and according to a lot of culinary guides, in the top ten of LA's best restaurants. It was a pretty expensive location, but Hans just loved Asian food, and Nobu's had the best offer (quality-wise) in the city.

Approximately 45 minutes later, they were sitting at their table in a quiet corner with ocean view. It was a very relaxed atmosphere, and especially the relationship between Miley and Sabrina seemed to become closer and closer. They also made plans about how Luc and Sabrina would spend the remaining days of their stay in LA. In the end, they agreed that the best would be if they just took one of Hans's cars and explored the city on their own, because with the former NBA player as a guide, they wouldn't have a peaceful second after yesterday. On the last day, he would drop them off at the airport, and spend the last day off with Miley. She would fly to Washington on Friday, while he would be heading to Luxembourg on Saturday. After all decisions were made, Miley had a final surprise for Hans:

"By the way, if you still want to introduce me to your family and friends, I could fly to Luxembourg on Tuesday, and if I remember correctly, arrive on Wednesday. I would just have to fly back the day after the wedding, but I managed to reschedule all my other appointments."

"Really? That's amazing. I just have to give my mother a little warning, she's already dying to meet you…I mean, we don't want her to have a heart attack"

"Right. You've already been through this, I still have to meet your family, and I'm a bit afraid that until now, they won't think too much of me."

"Haha, don't worry. My father will be relieved that I don't show up with a boring girl from a rich family that would make him feel uncomfortable, and my mother has no clue at all about who you are. She's more into traditional German music, you're not really hitting her taste."

"Oh well, anyway, I'm really looking forward to see your home country."

After the main course, Miley had to use the restrooms, and Sabrina, of course, got up to join her (Hans was convinced that men would never find out why girls always had to group up to go to the restrooms). Hans used this opportunity to ask Luc something that bothered him for the last 2 days:

"Ok, now you can tell me…how are you two holding up? I hope we didn't ruin your trip completely, you probably had other plans than the mess we've created. If I had known this before, I would have gotten you a hotel in Santa Monica. The only thing I could do now is to give you the keys to the beach house."

"Are you kidding? I think Sabrina has never been that excited before. Trust me, she would kill me if I tell her we should leave now to have a couple of boring and quiet days."

"Haha, ok, that's good to hear. I'm happy that we were able to provide you with a bit of entertainment."

Meanwhile in the ladies restroom, Miley also had something she needed to talk about:

"Look, Sabrina, I just wanted to thank you for the last days. It really helped me a lot to have another woman that I could talk to about everything. It's a shame that you're leaving in two days already"

Sabrina smiled as she answered:

"True, I could get used to the life over here. And when you come to Luxembourg next week, we'll leave the boys at home and go out on a ladies night"

"Haha, sounds amazing. You know, it's been years since I last had a real friend away from this whole entertainment industry. And even if you live a couple of thousand miles away, it would be great to have a friend like that again" Miley responded with a sad voice.

"Hm…I thought we were already?" Sabrina seemed to be surprised. "But seriously, I suppose it is, despite all the privileges, not easy to grow up in front of the whole world?"

"No, most of the time, it isn't. Of course you have a lot of privileges, like you said, but you never know if people really care about you, or about your money and fame. And to me, it really seems that I'm mostly attracting the second."

„I can imagine that this can be pretty tough. But Luc and I, we don't care about how famous you are or how much money you, we just like you for who you are"

"I know. The simple fact that you and Hans are good friends makes me trust you. He's way better at keeping the right people close to him than I am…but don't tell him I said that"

"Haha, don't worry. And whenever you have a rough time or just need to talk to someone, you know how to reach me. And besides, you have to update me on the newest scandals and rumors and, most important, report me how Adam Levine looks in reality. But don't tell Luc I said that…"

"Definitely not" Miley said and happily hugged her newfound friend.

When they came back from the restroom, Hans said jokingly that it took them quite a while to come back, but he could tell that something must have happened that seemed to be very important to Miley, and he had a slight idea what they were talking about. Just a couple of days ago, his girlfriend confessed to him how much she missed having regular friends, who didn't care that she was a famous movie actor or popstar, but just wanted to be with her because she was Miley.

They finished with a cup of coffee and soon after, it was time to leave the restaurant.

Hans asked his friends:

„Are you ready? I suppose there might be a couple of people with cameras waiting for us. They have their eyes and ears everywhere…"

„We could ask them to bring our car to the front door and get in as fast as possible. Like that, they won't see much of us" Miley suggested.

"No, it's fine. Let them take as many pictures as they want. The more they get now, the less they will bother us afterwards"

That sounded somewhat reasonable, so they got up from the table and left the restaurant. And, just like Hans was suspecting, there were about 15 paparazzi waiting outside and started taking pictures. In Hans experience, moments like this were the easiest to handle if you just gave them what they wanted. So he willingly posed with Miley for some pictures, and they even answered to a couple of questions:

"Hans, I'm sure you heard about the accusation that your relation is just a set-up, to raise some attention. Do you have anything to say to these people?"

"Not really, no, because I don't give a crap about what these people think. But believe me when I say that I'm in this relationship for one reason only, and that's because Miley makes me happy. And if a few million Americans think otherwise…that's not my problem."

"Miley, you certainly have read a lot of the posts published on Instagram, Twitter etc…how surprised have you been that Selena Gomez jumped in so quickly to support you? And how did that make you feel?"

"To be honest, I was very surprised, since it's no secret that our friendship didn't take a turn for the better over the last years. Which only makes me even more thankful for her support, and I hope that, after things get back to normal, we can sit down with a good glass of wine, talk about the good old times and maybe get a bit closer again"

"Hans, one more question. What do you think of Perez Hilton's blog?"

"I think that the style of this article says a lot about the personality of its author. If you can only have some success in your life by beating other people down, that's sad. And, if I take into consideration the reactions from a lot of people, he might have some trouble getting into any important events in the near future."

„Would you accept an apology from him?"

„No. Unless he could convince me that he's really sorry, which I honestly can't imagine. But if you may excuse us, we want to enjoy the rest of the day a bit" Hans put his arm around Miley, got into their car and they drove off.

And just like planned (or better said, just like he was hoping), the reporters were almost ecstatic that they took 10 minutes of their time to answer some questions, and were heading right away to their offices, in order to prepare their articles and blogs.

By sacrificing these minutes and respecting the wishes of the journalists, they made sure that they wouldn't be bothered too much for the rest of the day, and also, you were able to control up to a certain point, what was published and what wasn't. This was something that Miley was really surprised of:

"I never thought that these people would be so thankful for a few minutes of our time. If I had known that, I could have avoided a lot of trouble in the past…"

"Well, the first thing they teach you after you made it to the NBA is how to handle the media, how to behave in front of the cameras, what to avoid etc…I mean, you can say a lot of things about the Association, but they only hire the best people."

So they made it home without any trouble, where they were planning the rest of the day. Luc and Sabrina took one of Hans's cars to visit the Hollywood Boulevard and the Walk of Fame, while Hans and his girlfriend worked their way through all the interview requests that Miley's manager forwarded to them. And for the first time in her life, Miley would be the only one to decide which ones she would attend.

Hans tried to make a first selection:

"We'll surely go back to Ellen, because we owe her. But where else would you like to go?"

"Hm, let me see. I could talk to the Cosmopolitan, the LA Times and the Hollywood Reporter, I should be able to do that tomorrow. About the talk shows, like you said, Ellen will be the first one, then maybe Jimmy Fallon once I make it to New York, and James Corden. Eventually Jimmy Kimmel, but we don't want people to get fed up with us too quickly"

"God no, I'm really not that interesting. But when do you want to do all of this?"

"Like I said, I should be able to handle the interviews tomorrow, everything else probably once we've made it back from Luxembourg."

"Good plan" Hans agreed, when he suddenly got a text message on his smart phone which number was reserved for close friends. He always thought of it like his own Batphone, which made him feel pretty cool…

The message was from Kobe:

"Hey Bro…are you home by any chance? There's something I have to talk to you about"

"I am, just got back with Miley. What's so important?"

"I'll tell you when I'm inside. Just open the gate."

„You're already here?"

„Yeah, I just happened to be in the neighborhood"

"Right…"


	14. A last Goodbye

**A last goodbye**

5 minutes later, he was sitting outside at the pool with Kobe and Miley. First of all, Kobe wanted to know how they were holding up after making their relationship public, and after talking for a couple of minutes, Hans wanted to know why his friend really showed up:

"Ok, tell me, why are you here? I'm sure you didn't come all the way up here just to have a cup of coffee and holding hands…"

"Oh really, you don't think I would? That's somehow disappointing. Oh well, actually, I just wanted to show you this" Kobe grabbed into his man-purse (another trend that Hans didn't quite get), and pulled out a couple of documents and handed them over to the Luxembourger.

Hans took a curious look at them and he was pretty surprised when he realized what it was. A so-called 10 day contract, offered by the Orlando Magic, which meant that they intended to put him in their roster for the next two weeks. Which didn't make any sense at all, since the season was almost over, there was only one game left and they had already missed the playoffs.

"Well, that's really nice…but what am I supposed to do with this?"

"Remember what you told me when we had lunch together after practice? The only regret you have about your career is that you never had the chance to get your farewell? Well, tomorrow evening, the Orlando Magic are going to play their last game of the season against the Lakers, and since both teams already missed the playoffs, I talked to the Magic board, and they agreed to give you the chance for one last game. The game might not be in Orlando, but LA is kind of your second home, so that should be fine."

"You're aware that I'm completely out of shape? And I don't really feel like stepping on the court only to get my ass kicked by these young guns…" Hans seemed rather skeptical about this idea.

"First of all, we practiced together last week, and I remember it being the other way around, we kicked their ass. And secondly, I know you, once you get on that court, you gonna be so motivated that nothing else matters. Come on, you earned this, and if it can't happen in Orlando, then this is the perfect place for that game. Trust me, I know from my own experience, if you had a career like yours, you simply need one last game to completely let go of your playing days"

"Oh man, just now where things are so messy…"

Hans still wasn't convinced, when suddenly Miley jumped into the conversation:

"Come on, just say yes. Kobe's right, you earned this. Besides, I've never seen you play, at least not live, and it would make me very happy to get the chance to do that"

"Sure, just go ahead and take his side…"

"Please…" Miley looked at him with her best impression of puppy eyes.

"Yes Hans, pleaaaaaase…" Kobe joined in.

„Ok, fine…but you know that it's not fair to give me that look", Hans responded to Miley.

He signed the contract, wondering what he got himself into. He had to admit that he was somehow happy and flattered that he got offered this unexpected farewell game, on the other hand, he knew that his body wasn't in the shape for a real competition, and the Orlando Magic changed at least half of their roster since he stopped playing. But he could see that it really meant a lot to Miley to get the chance to see him play, he just wished he would have had a couple of weeks to get ready for it. But things were like they were, and he would make the best out of it. He suddenly started to smile and said:

"Wouldn't it be funny if you make this happen, and in return, I'm gonna break your scoring record for a farewell game?"

"I dare you" Kobe threatened him jokingly. The former Laker was able to put up 61 points in his last game, and Hans didn't have any illusions of showing a similar performance.

After he had signed the contract, they were talking about the details of the following day, and shortly after, Kobe left and Miley and Hans laid down on the couch.

"So, I'm really going to see you play tomorrow. It feels like an eternity since I've last been to the Staples Center. It must have been during the last championship season."

"Well, that's really quite a while. But when did you plan to fly to Washington?"

"Actually, tomorrow evening, but in this case, I will postpone my flight to Saturday. Maybe we can even drive to the airport together."

"We'll see, my flight to Zurich leaves at 11am. Honestly, I can't wait for you coming to Luxembourg, then we might finally have a couple of peaceful days"

"I suppose that's relative, I can't imagine us doing much over there besides resting…"

"Why not?" Hans asked surprised.

"Well, paparazzi, selfie-hunters, journalists…"

"Haha, trust me, when it comes to these things, you will love Luxembourg"

"What do you mean?"

"You'll realize that as soon as you arrive at the airport. You just have to dress like a normal, young woman and not like a superstar, and nobody will pay any attention to you. I mean, why should an international popstar like Miley Cyrus come to Luxembourg?"

"Haha, we'll see. And what is that supposed to mean, dress like a normal, young woman? Am I not always doing that?"

Hans preferred not to answer anything to that…

Around 6pm, Luc and Sabrina came back from their sightseeing tour, and especially Luc was pretty disappointed when he heard the news that they didn't leave a day later.

"Well, I can ask if there are some free seats left at my flight?"

"Better not, I can imagine that the rebooking fees and extra charges would cost us a fortune"

"I'll ask them very politely, I'm sure we can figure something out"

Hans called his personal assistant from the Miles and More club, and 15 minutes later, she came up with a solution to book the 3 of them on the same flight. He only had to postpone his departure from 11 am to 3 pm and he would arrive in Luxembourg just a couple of hours later than originally planned.

"So, if it's ok with you, we could actually fly back together on Saturday. The only small problem is, there are only seats in the first class left"

"Hu? No way, we were happy to bring up the money for our economy tickets, there's no way we can afford first class tickets"

"Yes, right, please take care of the rebooking and send the tickets to my email address, you still have it I suppose? Ok, perfect, thank you, have a nice day" Hans looked at Luc and asked him with a big smile: "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"You're crazy" Luc said with a sigh.

"I know. And now stop worrying, I mean, you said you would like to see the game…"

At this moment, Sabrina interrupted them:

"Wait, does this really mean we're flying back first class? God, if anyone told me this two weeks ago…a big mansion and a beach house in L.A, I get to meet Miley Cyrus, I'm flying first class…I think I need a drink…"

So Hans got up and poured a couple of drinks for his friends while they were planning the rest of the evening. Going to a party was out of question, at least for Hans, if he had to play tomorrow, he would be as much prepared as possible, which meant for today, no alcohol and going to bed early.

After he was already asleep for 2 hours (which was a bit surprising since it was still so early, but his body didn't seem to have any problems to switch back into the basketball season mode), Miley came to the bedroom. She was trying really hard not to wake him, but Hans didn't mind that she didn't succeed.

He yawned as he said to her:

"Don't bother, I'm awake"

"Oh shit, I'm sorry, I really didn't want to wake you up. But if you prefer, I can drive back home so you can sleep more peacefully"

"Don't be stupid, just come to bed"

Miley went to bed and immediately put her head on his chest:

"So, are you excited for tomorrow?"

"That's the least you could say. I have been out for an entire year, and I still don't know if I can trust my injured knee again. But I guess I'm gonna find out tomorrow"

"Look, I really didn't want to push you into anything, if I had known all this, I would have kept my mouth shut."

"Haha, don't worry. I am very thankful for this opportunity and I would have accepted anyway. It's just too tempting to have this one last game, especially since it's in LA. And to be honest, knowing that you will sit on the courtside just makes this whole thing perfect"

"It makes me really happy to hear that" Miley said, gave Hans a kiss and a couple of minutes later, both of them had fallen asleep.

The next morning, Hans got up early. At 8am, he had himself a small breakfast, and he was supposed to meet the team at the Staples Center for a shoot around at 09.30 am. Afterwards, the coaches would give him a short briefing, to make him familiar with at least some of the new set plays, which was followed by team lunch, a short practice and finally he could get some rest before the game would start at 8 pm.

He turned on ESPN, and just like he had feared, the news had already reached the Sportscenter. Right now, they had two of their basketball experts discussing the question if his one game comeback was just an attempt to gain even more publicity after he and Miley made their relationship public, or if Hans really wanted to play one last serious and competitive game, which seemed rather improbable to them after his career ending knee injury. Their final conclusion was that he should have better stayed in retirement and enjoy his new life in California.

"Well, we'll see if you're right or not" Hans thought to himself and felt how his competitive spirit woke up again. No matter what anyone thought about this, he would prove tonight that he deserved his farewell game. Miley, who already noticed that her boyfriend had already kind of zoned out, didn't even try to talk too much to him (which was very unusual for her), and soon enough, he was in the car, heading to the arena of the Los Angeles Lakers.

When he arrived, he had no problems getting into the parking space, since most of the security guards remembered some of his performances against their team. One of his likeable attributes was the fact that he basically never forgot a face (which was rather surprising, since he was a pretty chaotic person) and so he recognized and greeted everyone who was already working in the arena when he was still an active player. Inside the arena, he first ran into Nick Anderson, a former player of the Orlando Magic and current assistant coach. He guided Hans to the locker room where his old coach, Scott Skiles, was already waiting for him.

"There's our star. How are you? "he was greeted by his old mentor.

"Ask me that again after the game is over…"

They both had to laugh as they gave each other a warm hug. They had been through a lot together, from ecstatic wins to heartbreaking losses. Scott was coaching the Magic for 7 years now, and with him being responsible for the team, Hans had the best years of his career. Scoring always came kind of naturally to him, but under the guidance of this old school coach, he also developed into one of the best defenders in the league.

After chatting for a few minutes, Hans was led into the locker room, where he met the rest of the team. He still knew some of them pretty well, like Serge Ibaka or Aaron Afflalo, and also his former rookie Aaron Gordon, who became the main attraction of the team (which actually said a lot about their quality, since all he had to offer was some crazy athleticism) greeted his old mentor:

"Hey Captain, you really came. I just couldn't believe it when they told us the news, but I'm thrilled to go out on the field with you one more time"

"Haha, let's see if you still think like this once the game's over"

He also introduced himself to each one of the new players, most of them were still pretty new in this league since the franchise was trying a complete rebuild, and they met him with a lot of respect and almost disbelief. After all, he was considered the greatest player in franchise history, even if, in his opinion, that should be Shaquille O'Neal, but the problem was that he only stayed in Orlando for 4 seasons before he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers and developed into probably the most dominating center player in the history of basketball.

A bit later, he finally stepped on the shiny court of the Staples Center, and something happened that he didn't expect…it felt like coming home. Until now, he hadn't completely realized how much he missed being out on the court, since he tried to stay away from basketball as much as possible after his injury. Ah, the sound of the sneakers and the dribbled balls, coaches were screaming, and of course, the best sound in the world, when the ball went through the basket, hitting nothing but net…Swish!

There were two ball boys that got assisted to him, and the thought that the easiest would be if he ran through his old routine, which consisted of some ball handling and a couple of shooting drills. It took about 3 minutes before the old automatisms took over again. But it was mainly the shooting drills that left a huge impression on the young players who never saw him in practice before. He missed the first 4 shots, but then proceeded to make 49 out of the next 50. As he was shooting, like he always did in his career, 100 3's at the end of the shoot around, he made 91 of them. A bit disappointing, Hans thought to himself, unbelievable was what the young guns were thinking. Evan Fournier, who played 4 seasons with Hans, only said:

"Welcome back"

During the team lunch, the talk shifted inevitably to Hans's new relationship. And it was kind of funny to be mocked by his former rookie:

"So, Miley Cyrus, hu? What were the words again that you used last year? First, I'm gonna recover from my knee injury, and afterwards I'm gonna enjoy my retirement for at least 5 years. I would be stupid to burden myself with a girlfriend now…" he was citing one of their last conversations.

"Well, life doesn't always go according to your plan…" Hans mumbled as he was eating his pasta.

"And, I mean, Miley Cyrus. I would have rather expected a model or an actress, considering your relation to the movie industry. So how is she in private, I mean she has done some crazy things over the last years…and, please tell me you gonna move to Nashville and start wearing a cowboy hat?"

"First of all, show a little respect to your old mentor"

Aaron stood up and bowed his head:

"Of course Sensai, I pledge for your forgiveness"

Hans had to laugh as he answered:

"Smartass. But seriously, she had a couple of rough years, but I think she's back on the right track again. And, what can I say, somehow this little girl managed to push all the right buttons."

"You can admit it, you just couldn't resist when it came to your childhood idol, the great Hannah Montana"

"Oh the young players of today, you really don't show any respect to the veterans anymore. But I can ask her to take a selfie with you tonight if you want."

"Well, that's the least you can do" Aaron said with a big smile in his face.

Hans started to realize how much he really missed this part of his former life. Practicing with the guys, spending time with them, the locker room banter, the friendships you built and the team spirit. But of course, our brain had the habit of saving mostly positive memories, and he knew that not everything was perfect in the life of an NBA player, like the preseason with the torture they called training camp, the constant travels, the pain or the permanent fatigue during the exhausting road trips. But all in all, it was an amazing life if you were able to make a lot of money and become a celebrity by living your dream.

After lunch, they went through a light practice, where they were trying to teach Hans some of the set plays. He was still able to run most of them in his sleep, but they also introduced a couple of new ones since the roster had changed a lot, and his old coach wasn't surprised that it took Hans only a couple of minutes to find scoring opportunities that the other players didn't even think about after running these plays for more than 6 months.

At 4pm, he was showered and dressed, and while the rest of the team would head back to the hotel to get a short rest, Hans was heading home to take a little nap. They were supposed to meet in the arena at 6.30 pm to prepare for the game.

When he arrived in the house, he had the impression that something was different, and it took him a few minutes to find out. It was empty and quiet. Miley was doing her first interviews while Luc and Sabrina went to explore the city one last time before flying back to Luxembourg. As much as he always enjoyed spending time for himself, he really got used to having other people around him during the last days. What surprised him the most was how fast he got used having to this Tasmanian Devil that Miley sometimes was, in the house. At first, she was still a little bit reserved cause she was a bit afraid that she would mess things up or drift back into her old habits, but once she was reassured that Hans was really committed to this relationship, she found back to her true self. Miley was like a mixture between that sweet Hannah Montana and a crazy wild (in a positive way) young woman. Full of energy, happy, passionate and with a big heart, she used every chance to start singing and she was basically never quiet. But from one moment to another, she could also become very serious, leading deep conversations and not being afraid of showing all kinds of emotions, and Hans just couldn't deny it anymore, he was completely crazy about this girl. And the worst of it all was…he just loved it.

He was back at the Staples Center 15 minutes before the scheduled meeting time and went straight to the locker room. He wasn't surprised at all to see that coach Skiles seemingly didn't go back to the hotel at all but stayed in the arena to prepare the game plan. Even if none of the two teams had a chance of making the playoffs anymore, and the game was a bit special anyway because of Hans farewell, he just couldn't go against his principles and wanted to finish the season with a win, no matter what. Hans didn't expect to get more than a couple of minutes in the garbage time anyway, and that the Lakers would let him take a shot or two so that the fans could celebrate him and give him a standing ovation in the end. And still, he was more than thankful to be able to enjoy that atmosphere and step on the court one more time, this time knowing it would be his last game and so he would enjoy every single second of it.

„Hey, how are you feeling son?"

"Honestly? I haven't been that nervous since my very first NBA game"

"Haha, I know what you mean. Look, before the rest of the team arrives, I just wanted to talk to you very shortly. My original plan was not to make too much fuss about you playing tonight, and giving you a couple of minutes towards the end of the game so the people can send you to your retirement in the way that you deserve it. But after the two practice sessions today, I decided that you gonna be my 6th man, and we'll take it from there. I somehow have this feeling that you have one last big game inside you, and tonight would be the perfect moment to let it out."

"Thank you coach" Hans said, even though he wasn't sure if that really was the case. He somehow doubted it.

Slowly, the rest of the team arrived in the locker room, most of them seemingly ready for the summer and thinking about their next holiday destination. Hans held himself back, but if he would have still been an active member of this team, he would have reminded the guys that there was a game to win first. On the other side, if he would have been part of this team, they would have to prepare for the playoffs and not the summer vacation, he thought with a smile.

They put on their uniforms and got ready for the game while the coach reminded them about the game plan and the strengths and weaknesses of their opponent. Just like the Magic, the Lakers were in the phase of a rebuild and found themselves at the bottom of their division, so that nobody really expected anything from the game tonight. And yet, as soon as the news were published that Hans would put on a uniform again, every single ticket available was sold and the arena would be packed.

It was time to go out on the court for the warm up, at least for the rest of the team, Hans kept to his old routine and warmed up on a cross trainer. He did so for almost 30 minutes and went back to the locker room where they received their final instructions and they went back out in the arena. They huddled together in the tunnel before stepping on the court, and to Hans surprise, it was his former rookie Aaron Gordon who was holding the team speech:

"Ok guys, you all know what today is about. We're blessed to have the opportunity to play side on side with the greatest player in franchise history. There's only one goal for us tonight, give this legend the goodbye he deserves, with a victory against the Lakers. Captain, it's an honor to go to battle with you one more time"

Hans had to smile, this speech was so typically pathetic like only Americans were able to come up with, and yet, he was very touched, because it was his old rookie holding it and he actually believed every word that the young player had said. The rest of the team was now fully focused and they wanted to give him a memorable game. A last hug with Aaron, and they stepped out on the court.

Hans immediately realized a couple of things. The arena was completely sold out, there would be 20.000 people in the stands and Miley and his friends were already sitting in their courtside seats. The two girls had treated themselves with a new Lakers hoodie while Luc was wearing an Orlando Magic t-shirt. Kobe was sitting next to Miley, and there were some other regulars, like Will, Jack Nicholson or Justin Timberlake. But he didn't react to any of these things, his mindset was already focused on the game.

A few minutes later, the introduction of the teams started, and you could tell that the spectators were not too pleased about the fact that Hans was sitting on the bench for the tip-off. Finally, the game started, and it would be a memorable evening for everyone in the arena.


	15. Back home

**Back home**

After the game, Hans took his time to talk to everyone, and especially his former rookie Aaron Gordon and coach Scott Skiles were surprisingly emotional. After he said his goodbyes to the whole Magic team and staff (they flew back to Orlando the same evening), Hans just wanted to eat something and lie down on the couch. But Miley had other plans in mind and already organized a surprise party. They drove to her father's house where some of his friends were already waiting. Of course Will and Jada were there, Kobe with his wife, Billy Ray, Ellen and Portia, and last but not least, David Beckham and his wife Victoria. Luc and Sabrina were also invited and they arrived together at the mansion.

Fortunately, it was a pretty quiet evening with a barbecue and a couple of drinks. After his friends left the house around 2am, it was also time for Hans and Miley and their friends Luc and Sabrina to drive back to his house. They still had to pack their luggage and they would have to leave for the airport around 12am. Miley's flight was at 5 pm, but she would of course spend the night with Hans. After they said goodbye to Billy Ray and were on their way to the car, Miley suddenly said:

"Could I just have a quick word with my father before we leave? There are a few things I have to tell him"

"I see…we'll wait outside" Hans replied and kissed his girlfriend.

Miley went back to her father, who was still cleaning up the kitchen and was somewhat surprised to see his daughter coming back.

"Oh Miley, you forgot something? "

"Not really, no. But, can we talk?"

„Of course" Billy Ray said surpised. „Oh my God, she's pregnant" was the first thought that came to his mind.

"I just wanted to ask you, and I know it's a bit short term, if you would be willing to come to Washington with me tomorrow? That would be a huge relief for me"

"Are you sure? Because you made it pretty clear at one point why I should stay away from your gigs as far as possible"

"I know, and I feel terrible because of what I said. It would be just…you know what, just forget it, I shouldn't have brought this up"

"Miley, I'm your father, and if you want me to be there tomorrow, then there's nothing in this world that could stop me from flying to Washington with you. I'm just…surprised"

"Yeah, I know. So you're in?"

„Of course I'm in. And now come here and give your old man a hug"

Miley happily went to her father who took her in his arms.

"God, I really missed that" he said to himself.

"I'm so sorry about how I was treating you all this time. But I promise you, I will do my best to make it up, and I hope that one day, you'll be able to forgive me, and love me again as much as you did when I was still your little girl". She gave him a little squeeze, wiped her eyes and turned around to leave the kitchen.

"Miley, before you go. The only thing I feel sorry about if it comes to the last years is the fact that you really thought I might have loved you any less than I did on the day you were born. If anything has changed, then only the fact that I loved you more with each day that has passed. And no matter what happens or what you do…you will always be my little girl"

That was an answer that Miley didn't expect, and she went back to hug her father. She had Hans, she won back the hearts of the people from LA, and she finally got back her father who she seemingly never lost. For the first time in years, her life felt…complete.

"Thank you dad. I'll see you tomorrow"

"You will. And I suppose I have now a suitcase to pack before going to bed"

When Miley got into the car, Hans could see that she was pretty emotional. Fortunately, Luc and Sabrina, who were sitting in the second car, couldn't see her.

"You're ok?" Hans asked.

„Yes. Perfect. Or at least, better than I felt in years"

The next morning was all about going separate ways again, although the next days would be, at least for Miley, so stressful that she probably wouldn't even have the time to miss Hans. When the taxi arrived to drive them to the airport, Luc and Sabrina said goodbye to Miley. Especially the two girls had become almost inseparable and so, a lot of promises were made that they would text each other, call, send pictures, snaps (whatever on earth that was supposed to mean) etc…but everything was totally understandable, as they wouldn't see each other for at least 5 days.

But also Hans had a hard time leaving his girlfriend, even if it was only for a few days. He got so used of having her around every single day, or at least most of the days, that he couldn't imagine life without Miley anymore.

"And you'll be doing great in Washington tomorrow. Don't forget, make Hannah's song your own, and people will love it. And I already can't wait to pick you up at the airport."

"And you don't forget to watch my performance…and don't worry, my father will be there to make sure everything will be fine. I'll see you on Wednesday." They kissed goodbye, and Hans and his friends were leaving for the airport.

They made it through the check-in and the security control pretty fast, one of the many perks you had when you were traveling first class. After they were sitting in the lounge for an hour, taking advantage of the free food and drinks, they were led to the airplane. After taking their seats, it took a whooping two minutes for Sabrina to fall asleep.

Hans couldn't stop himself from saying with a naughty smile:

"I see someone didn't get too much sleep last night"

"Oh, you can stop your stupid smile…if only it would have been like that. But she spent the whole night posting and editing pictures on Facebook and Instagram. She actually waited till this morning to post them all at once. I think it was really like a shock for a lot of her friends when she suddenly had Miley as a follower on Instagram and as a Facebook friend"

"Well, at least you can say that this trip was worth something" Hans replied laughingly.

The flight itself was very comfortable and went by pretty fast. Since the last days were pretty exciting (for Luc) or pretty exhausting (for Hans), they spent most of the time, just like Sabrina, sound asleep. If he should ever had thought about a real comeback, the pain he felt basically everywhere in his body today, told him otherwise. Every single muscle hurt, and he felt like an 80 year old man.

The trip took just under 19 hours, and when they finally landed in Luxembourg, Hans was still tired as hell. He left Luc and Sabrina, who were picked up by Luc's parents, tried to find his car that his father left in the parking lot a day ago, and soon enough, he was on his way home. He had a quick dinner with his parents, who were glad to get to see their son after he spent the last couple of months in the US, and his mother was dying to know how things were going with Miley. Somehow, she still couldn't believe that her youngest son finally found himself in a serious relationship. Soon after, he went back to his penthouse, which was only about 5 walking minutes away. A short shower, and he could finally go to sleep.


	16. Miley's comeback

**Miley's comeback**

More than 100.000 people, mainly teenagers between 16 and 20, had made their way to Washington D.C to demonstrate against gun violence and for more severe gun control laws. The trigger was a recent shooting at a high-school in Florida, where 16 students and 3 teachers lost their lives. The atmosphere was pretty heated, because President Trump was a big supporter of the NRA (The National Rifle Association), and therefore he refused to meet with a delegation of the students who set up this whole event without any help from official organizations.

A lot of celebrities joined the cause and showed up to show their support to the youth, amongst them were the likes of George Clooney with his wife, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Will Smith and a lot more.

Meanwhile, Miley was backstage, and she was nervous, excited and anxious, all at once. 5 minutes from now, she was supposed to perform in front of these people, and she had no idea how they would react to this old song from Hannah Montana. If she looked back at how the last two weeks had gone, it could only be a huge success, but you never knew. She still hadn't completely realized everything that happened…she met the love of her life (this time for real), she made peace with her father, the people of LA had forgiven her and let her back into their hearts, and for the first time in 8 years, she finally felt like herself again. She was so deep into her thoughts that she almost didn't notice when Billy Ray touched her shoulder.

"It is time Miley, you're on in 30 seconds. Are you ready?"

„As ready as I can be. I just hope that they won't boo me off the stage."

"Oh come on, they gonna love you. Hans was right, it's an amazing song, and if you make it your own, it will only get better. Now go out there and blow them away" Billy Ray gave his daughter a last hug before she nervously stepped out on the stage.

The crowd was huge, and Miley didn't have any time to adjust to the amount of people, because as soon as she stepped on stage, the music started to play. The organizers had offered her to do a playback version of the song, but that was something she strictly refused. She always had the opinion that, if people came to see and hear a certain artist, they deserved to hear them play live. She had also planned to say a few things during her performance, and this just wouldn't work if it was a playback.

The first reaction to Miley was rather neutral, there was some applause, others just didn't react at all, but most of all, there were no hostile reactions. The music started, and Miley sang the first verse. You could hear the insecurity in her voice at the beginning, and also that she didn't perform this song for years in front of an audience. But as soon as the crowd realized what song she was performing, it all didn't matter anymore, and more than 50.000 teenagers started to sing along:

„I can almost see it  
That dream I'm dreaming but  
There's a voice inside my head saying  
You'll never reach it,  
Every step I'm taking,  
Every move I make feels  
Lost with no direction  
My faith is shaking but I  
Gotta keep trying  
Gotta keep my head held high

There's always gonna be another mountain  
I'm always gonna wanna make it move  
Always gonna be an uphill battle  
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose  
Ain't about how fast I get there  
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side  
It's the climb

The struggles I'm facing  
The chances I'm taking  
Sometimes might knock me down but  
No I'm not breaking  
I may not know it

But these are the moments that  
I'm going to remember most yeah  
Just got to keep going  
And I  
I gotta be strong  
Just keep pushing on, 'cause

There's always gonna be another mountain  
I'm always gonna wanna make it move  
Always gonna be an uphill battle  
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose  
Ain't about how fast I get there  
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side  
It's the climb (yeah)

There's always gonna be another mountain  
I'm always gonna wanna make it move  
Always gonna be a uphill battle  
Sometimes you gonna have to lose  
Ain't about how fast I get there  
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side  
It's the climb (yeah yeah ea ea)

Keep on moving  
Keep climbing  
Keep the faith baby  
It's all about  
It's all about  
The climb  
Keep the faith  
Keep your faith"

Afterwards, Miley couldn't find the words to express what she felt. All she knew was, it just felt right to sing this song again, and the reactions of the people were just amazing. They sang along at the top of their lungs and responded every time as soon as Miley communicated with the crowd. But the young people were just as amazed as the artist. They were excited to hear a song that was so important to them in their childhood and which sent out such a positive message. But also amazed about the fact that they had Miley…their Miley…back. The cheers after the performance seemed to go on forever, and all that Miley could do was looking at the crowd, speechless and in awe, unable to say another word. She tried to pull herself together, thanked her audience and went backstage, where she was looking for her father, who was already waiting for his daughter. She threw herself into his arms, and all the pain from the last 8 years was finally released with her tears.

Billy Ray was also touched by the whole performance and the reaction of the people, and his voice was a bit shaky as he hugged his daughter and whispered to her ear:

"Welcome back Sweetie…you have no idea how much I missed you"

Miley needed a couple of minutes to calm down again. The crowd on the other side didn't stop screaming for more, they wanted Miley to come back on stage.

"Say, Dad, when was the last time that we performed together?"

"Well, more or less 7 years if I remember correctly, why?"

"That's way too long, don't you think?"

She didn't give Billy Ray an opportunity to answer and pulled him out on stage with her, and when the crowd saw who was joining her, they went completely nuts.

Miley gave the band a sign, and they started to play Billy Ray Cyrus biggest hit, Achy Breaky Heart. One member of the band handed him a guitar and a microphone, and for the first in a long time, father and daughter were performing together. People were amazed and they were cheering so loud that you could surely hear it in the Oval Office. It was planned that Miley would perform one song, but it turned into a short concert. After Achy Breaky Heart, they sang Butterfly fly away, Jolene, and to finish it up, Miley sang the biggest hit of her career so far, Party in the USA. After she finished the last song, she took a look at the crowd, and she realized she felt something she hadn't known for, it seemed, an eternity…she was completely happy.


	17. Welcome to Luxembourg

**Welcome to Luxembourg**

Hans was staring at his tv and couldn't believe what he just saw. The crowd was so amazed by Miley that they basically refused to let her go after only one song, and when she reappeared together with her father, he had a hard time to not get too emotional. For the first time, he actually realized how famous Miley was in the US and in some parts of Europe, and seeing her on that stage, he was so proud of her, and he still had no idea how it was possible that this woman wanted to be his girlfriend.

First, he sent Miley a text message, calling her probably wouldn't make any sense now.

"Hey, I just saw that everything went great, you have no idea how proud I am of you right now. I'll be heading to my bachelor party in about two hours, but don't hesitate to call me once you have a bit of a break. Love you. PS: Achy Breaky Heart…seriously? "

He was smiling as he pushed the send button. Afterwards, he realized that this was the first time, apart from the hundreds of private concerts he got to enjoy, that he witnessed a real live performance from Miley, and he had to admit that he was more than impressed by her voice and her presence on stage. He went to take a shower and get dressed before they would surprise Serge for his special day. Funnily, his parents would lure his friend into this, by pretending that they were interested in his services as an interior designer. This type of bachelor parties usually didn't happen on a Sunday, but everybody invited was able to get Monday off from work (ok, most of them took 2 days off, just in case it got too bad), and also Serge's boss was already informed that he shouldn't expect his employee to come to work the next day. But most of all, they were sure that Serge didn't expect this to happen on a Sunday at all.

As he came out of the bathroom, he saw that he had a couple of text messages on his phone, the first one being from Luc's girlfriend Sabrina:

"Hey, I hope you've seen Miley, her performance was just awesome. We really have to make it to one of her concert's some day."

"Of course I saw everything. And, about the concert, I might hook you up with the tickets, I know a couple of people that might help us… ".

The next message came from Will:

"Hey, I just saw Miley's gig, the girl rocks"

Hans made his way to his parents and soon after, all of Serge's friends arrived, and finally at 2pm, the groom himself showed up. Even though he almost got a heart attack when his friends suddenly jumped around the corner, he was really happy, especially that Hans came back from LA earlier to take part in this. We don't want to waste any time by going too much into the details, but it turned out to be a fun night with food, music and alcohol…lots of alcohol.

Before it would be impossible to have a serious conversation, Hans took his soon to be married friend aside:

"I know it's a bit late, but do you think it might be possible to bring someone to the wedding?"

"So your girlfriend is really coming? I somehow didn't expect that. But of course, that's no problem, and like that I'm finally gonna meet her."

"Yeah, she definitely didn't expect me to want her here already, but she was able to reschedule all her appointments, so that she can stay here for 9 days."

"So when will she arrive?"

"Wednesday"

"Haha…who would have thought…that you would show up on my wedding with your girlfriend?"

Hans sighed in despair:

"Why am I not surprised?"

As soon as everything was settled, they went back to the rest of the group, and we better don't lose too much words about what happened during the rest of the night.

When Hans woke up the next morning, it took him some time to figure out where he was. Somehow, he didn't make it to the bedroom anymore and fell asleep on the couch. Every bone in his body hurt, his mouth was unbelievably dry and considering his enormous headache, he must have been drinking way more then he remembered…in short words, he had a deadly hangover. But as the images from last night slowly popped up in his head, he didn't regret one sip of it. It just felt too good to have a crazy night out after the exhausting last couple of weeks.

He was surprised when he saw it was already 2 pm, which was a bit late for breakfast, so he put a pizza in the oven and took a cold shower. He felt slightly better after the shower but still, he could feel that he wasn't a teenager anymore.

Just as he sat down on the couch with his lunch, his phone started to ring and Miley's name appeared on the display:

"Hey" Oh wow, he somehow sounded like Joe Cocker after two bottles of whiskey and a box of cigars.

"Haha, sounds like someone had a pretty interesting night…"

„That's no reason to scream in your phone like that…" Hans grumbled.

"Hm, is it possible that you are a bit grumpy…or are you just getting old?"

"That might be possible, but at least I can tell from the things I remember…it was worth it. But tell me, how are you? Your performance turned out to last a bit longer than planned?"

"What can I say, that song was the perfect choice. It was just unreal, and going back on stage with my father just made it even more perfect. I think that performing together fixed more between us than any conversation could have"

"Good to hear. And what are your plans for today? Will you be able to get some rest?"

"Not really, no. I have a meeting with some people from my production company a bit later, we want to set up a timeline for the production of my new album. I suppose we'll start the studio work as soon as we're back from Luxembourg."

"So there will be a new album soon. You already got the lyrics together for the songs?"

"Not all of them, but I have some ideas. There will be a few surprises, especially for you…"

"Oh really? Like what?"

"Pff, you know what surprise means, right? I won't tell you…"

"Haha, sorry, can't blame me for trying. And for the flights tomorrow, everything's set up?"

"Let's say, everything is booked and organized. I just hope I will arrive at the right airport, it's the first time I'm travelling to Europe on my own"

"You'll be fine. And when you come through the exit, I'll be waiting for you."

"I'm really looking forward to it. Ok, I have to head to my next appointment, I'll see you in two days"

Hans used the rest of the day to recover a bit from the bachelor party, in other words, he didn't do anything at all. On Tuesday, he met his parents and his godfather for lunch and in the evening, he joined Luc for basketball practice in Larochette, the club that Luc was playing for. And only in an amateur club like this, it was possible that one of the main players disappeared on a US trip for 2 weeks in the middle of the season. Hans was running up and down the court a little bit to help out with some drills and a bit of 5 on 5. Or at least this was the initial plan, but when his team was trailing, his competitive spirit woke up and he upped the tempo a bit, so that everyone in the gym could see why the two professional players of the Larochette team were making about 1500$ per month, while Hans made up to 20 million per season at the peak of his career.

After practice, he drove back home, watched a movie and went to sleep. Tomorrow at 2 pm, he would finally pick up Miley at the airport. He was very curious to find out how she would like Luxembourg. It actually meant a lot to him, since he planned for the future to spend some time of the year in his home country.

Meanwhile on Tuesday morning in Washington D.C, Miley was a little nervous. For the first time in her life, she would fly to Europe on her own. She had booked first class tickets and therefore would be more or less isolated from the other passengers, but it was still a bit scary. The meeting with the producers were very efficient, but she told Hans a little lie about the state of her new album. The lyrics were mostly done, and the surprise she mentioned was a song that she completely wrote herself, and it was about her first date with Hans and how much he had changed her life. She couldn't wait to finish the album and see how Hans would react to this song.

A few minutes later, it was time to head to the airport. She would share a cab with her father and then wait in the First Class Lounge for the intercontinental flights. She would use Swiss Air to fly to Luxembourg, with a stopover in Zurich. She was excited to finally arrive, she had already been in France and Germany, but never in this tiny little country. A whole country with a population of just half a million people…sounded somewhat funny.

2 hours later, Miley was in the plane. Everything had worked just perfectly until now, and nobody bothered her in any way, because apart from her, there were two elderly couples and 3 business men in the first class, and they were not the kind of people that were interested in her or her music. The flight was very calm, and when they arrived in Zurich, they were brought to the Swiss Air lounge by a separate bus. The stopover in Switzerland was 3 hours, followed by the flight that the young artist was concerned about. The Luxembourgish airline only possessed smaller aircrafts where there was no first class, only business class, but not really separated from the rest. She just hoped that there wouldn't be too many people recognizing her. She followed Hans advice and put on a surprisingly modest outfit with a sweatshirt and a pair of leggings, but she doubted this would help a lot.

A couple of hours later, she was in the plane and she was…perplex. They were about to land in Luxembourg, and nobody had paid the slightest attention to her…which was somehow disappointing to be honest.

A few minutes later, they were landing at the small Luxembourg airport. Miley looked out of the window, curious how everything would look like. The landscape was similar to the one in Germany or France, the only thing she noticed was that she had never seen such a small airport before, it looked even smaller than the private airport in Aspen. They even walked from the aircraft to the airport building, which she had never seen before at a public airport, and picking up her luggage only took about 10 minutes. There still wasn't a single person that had tried to talk to her, so she was heading to the exit. She hoped Hans was already there, after all, she hadn't seen him since last Saturday. Miley arrived at the door and took a deep breath, she was expecting journalists and paparazzi waiting for her, and when she stepped into the arrivals hall there were…only normal people, nobody waiting to take pictures of her and blending her with the flashlight. She got excited and took a look around (this airport was really small) and finally, she was able to locate Hans. As it seemed, he was in an intense fight with the vending machine.

A few seconds later, he seemed to give up an turned around. The vending machine took his 2 euros, but it refused to spill out his snack. The resignation however turned into joy when he saw Miley. He went over to her and was finally able to hug and kiss her again. Happy to have her back, he took her luggage with his left hand, while he put his right arm around her:

"So, how did it feel, to travel all by yourself?"

"To be honest, it was actually disappointingly boring. No autographs, no pictures, everything worked out…almost creepy. But people over here really don't care about me at all it seems."

"They would, if they had any idea who you are. The thing is, being dressed like you are right now, nobody suspects you to be an international popstar. Besides, people like you don't really spend their time here in Luxembourg. And God, you look cute in that sweatshirt."

"Sounds like a good explanation and haha, very funny. By the way, where are my flowers?" she asked.

"I was serious about the sweatshirt. And there are no flowers, but I prepared a little surprise for you at home" Hans answered with a smile.

"So what are you waiting for? Let's go!"

On the way to Hans place, which was about 25 minutes away from the airport, Miley took a first look at the country where she might spend a lot of time in the future. She really liked the landscape, lots of green and lots of nature, small villages, it looked just perfect to recover a bit from the stressful life in Los Angeles. But she was definitely shocked when they arrived at the apartment building and Hans explained her that they just crossed more or less a third of the whole country.

Calling his flat an apartment or penthouse would be an understatement. Hans just bought all three apartments on the last floor and remodeled them according to his needs (or preferences), so that he had a living space of almost 4000 square feet. There were 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a small gym, sauna, a huge kitchen and living room, 2 dressing rooms and, of course, a games room. Additional to this, he had 6 parking spaces in the underground garage, but he only used 3 of them. He definitely liked cars, but he didn't see any sense in having a dozen of them.

After he had shown Miley most of his place (of course they started with the most important room…her dressing room), she asked impatiently:

"Ok, and where's my surprise?"

"Are you in a hurry? Just give me a few minutes, I just have to prepare something"

Hans went to the bedroom and it took him about 5 minutes before he came back. He found Miley in the dressing room which he had emptied for her, and it looked like she was already settling in pretty fine. He observed her for a few seconds before he said:

"I mean, if you're too busy, the surprise can wait until tomorrow"

"What? No no, I'm done…where is it?"

"Just follow me"

He grabbed his girlfriend by the hand and guided her into the bedroom. The lights were switched off and he had lit a few candles instead, then he pushed a button on the remote control and some romantic music started to play. He told her to lie down on the bed and said with a big grin:

"Don't get me wrong, but for the next part, you have to take off your clothes…"

"Really? And why, if I may ask?"

"Well, I thought that after all the stress you had in Washington and traveling to Luxembourg, you might have to relax a bit and could use a little massage"

Miley turned around to give Hans a kiss, undressed and lied down on the bed. It had been awhile since Hans lastly gave a massage to a girl, but he considered himself as rather talented in this area. Besides, the most important was using the right oil.

He bought one that smelled like some kind of herbs, and taking in account Miley's reaction to it, he made a good choice. He started massaging her, and he enjoyed touching his girlfriend and feeling her soft skin under his hands. He massaged her back and shoulders, arms and legs, and since he took his job very serious, he couldn't, of course, neglect the butt. Miley meanwhile was in heaven…candle light, romantic music, oil and a massage. She had closed her eyes and was about to fall asleep when Hans suddenly stopped.

"Hey, that's it already?"

„Nope. But now you have to turn around, we're moving to the front part". Hans didn't even try to hide his lustful smile.

"Pff…you should be ashamed to take advantage of me like that" Miley murmured, but turned around willingly.

Like that, Hans could turn his attention to the more…interesting…parts of the body, and after he was done with the massage, they found out that it was pretty convenient to have a big shower where 2 people could fit in without a problem.


	18. A second home

**A second home**

The next morning, Miley slept in pretty late, even though Hans tried his best, he wasn't able to massage the jetlag and the stress of the last weeks completely out of her body. But she had to get up at one point, since they were supposed to have lunch with Hans parents at 12:30 am, and his mother was already so excited to meet Miley that they didn't want to be late. After they both had showered, they walked over to the house, which was only 5 minutes away from the penthouse. It was the first time that Miley could take a look at the neighborhood, and she was a bit surprised that she really liked what she saw.

When they arrived at the house, they entered through the garage (Hans had a key) and went upstairs to the kitchen where his parents were. Miley was a bit nervous, but after she was greeted by them, she immediately felt at ease. Like Hans told her before, his father didn't care at all about any scandals, he was more scared about the possibility that Hans would start dating a girl from a rich and noble family, which wasn't really the kind of people that he felt comfortable to be around. His mother didn't actually know a lot about Miley. She knew she was a pop star, but she was more into German music, and she also knew about some scandals (she didn't research any details though, since googling wasn't a strength of hers). But most of all, she was just happy that finally one of her two sons introduced a girlfriend to them. So there were the usual hugs, questions and chatter, and when a few minutes later, Alba, Hans Italian aunt, surprisingly showed up, together with her dog Kimmy, the chaos was complete. Just like Daisy, Kimmy just ignored Hans and ran straight over to Miley. This seemed to become some kind of habit…

The atmosphere during the lunch was very relaxed, only Hans mother was a bit quiet at first, because her English skills weren't perfect, but they were good enough to lead a normal conversation, you just sometimes had to repeat a sentence before she fully understood it. So when Miley went to the bathroom, there seemed to be only one thing bothering her about the young woman:

"I have to say, Miley really is a sweet girl, despite all these scandals, but are all of her tattoos real ones?"

"Haha, I somehow expected this question. But yes, they are."

"Oh…I hope you won't start doing the same now…"

"Don't worry, the two I have are more than enough for me"

His mother was horrified:

"TWO? Since when do you have two?"

"Oh, did I forget to tell you about that?" Hans was smiling, but he didn't go further into that.

After they said their goodbyes, also to aunt Alba and Kimmy, they went back to the penthouse to decide what they would do with the rest of the day. They agreed on going to the cinema, even if Miley was very skeptical if this would be even possible without creating a major chaos.

On the way to the movies, she wanted to know if Hans already got any feedback from his parents:

"What was your impression, did your parents like me at least a little bit?"

"More than a little, don't worry. My mother loves you, despite all your tattoos…and my aunt, she just wants to take care of everybody."

"Haha, yes, I noticed…she's really amazing"

When they arrived at the cinema, Miley was expecting any moment to see a crowd of people storming at her, but other than a few people saying hi to Hans (Luxembourg was so small, no matter where you went in the evening, you always met some people you knew), nothing happened. They ate a salad at Dean & David, watched the movie and even had an ice cream afterwards without getting bothered.

The next morning while having breakfast, Hans finally asked the question he was a bit afraid of:

"So, how do you like Luxembourg till now?"

"Honestly, I love it. There's so much nature, everything is small and quiet, it's the perfect place to relax. It's just…I hope you won't be mad…but I couldn't imagine living here."

"Well, of course we will spend most of our common future in LA, you have your career over there and I have my business, but as long as you can imagine to visit Luxembourg for a week or two every now and then, that would make me very happy."

Miley smiled at him:

"Our common future? That almost sounds like you're planning to stay with me for a bit longer?"

"A bit longer? Haha, there's no way you will get rid of me in the next 60 years"

"That sounds too good to be true…growing old together, having kids…a few weeks ago, I didn't think that would ever be possible for me. But, to answer your question, if you really think you can cope with my craziness for that long, of course it wouldn't be a problem to regularly come here for a few weeks…I mean, it's still your homeland, and your family lives here."

That was exactly the answer he was hoping for, and he was more and more able to imagine their future life together.

Just as they were talking about how to spend the day, Hans received a text message from Luc:

"Hey, since we're in the middle of a school holiday, some people of the team are meeting at the castle, don't you think it's about time you show your girl this amazing old building?"

"Hm, sounds like a plan. We can be there at 3 pm, so keep us a seat"

Miley had no idea how it should be possible to spend time in a castle that was more than 800 years old, but she couldn't wait to see Sabrina again. So after they had lunch in Hans favorite restaurant, they rested for a bit and then headed straight for Larochette Castle.

The castle was more a ruin, the only parts that were still intact were the main tower and the outer walls, all the other buildings were mostly destroyed. It was owned by the city (or rather village) of Larochette, and the steward was a member of the basketball club, which implied that the small snack place in the court of the castle was a popular meeting point for the players and fans of the club. The castle was built in the 12th century…which meant that it was guarding this village longer than America had been officially discovered by Christopher Columbus.

As soon as they reached the inside of the court, two things happened at the same time: Hans, who was used to this sight, immediately spotted his friends. Luc and Sabrina, Luc's brother with his girlfriend, Christopher, Sam, Steven, Dj and, of course, the two American players X'avier and Ladarius, at least half of the team was there. And then there was Miley's reaction, who just now realized how powerful and impressive this castle must have been at its peak. Anyway, she was very impressed.

She didn't have too much time to be in awe though, since Sabrina had seen her and was immediately greeting Miley with a big hug. Hans introduced his girlfriend to the team, and most of all the youngest member of the team, Steven, didn't know what to say. Since the 18 year old boy was a huge hip hop fan, he didn't know that much about Miley's music, but he surely loved the album where she was cooperating with some of the biggest stars of the hip hop scene.

After a few minutes, everybody had calmed down, and while Hans was talking a bit to pretty much everyone, Miley was taken aside by the girls. Sabrina had to know everything about Washington, and as soon as she heard that a new album was about to be produced, she had to know every detail about it. Hans heard them mention his name a couple of times, but as soon as he looked over, they just looked at him and stopped talking.

"Great, I suppose everybody will know about the surprise except for me…"

"Don't be so grumpy…you'll figure it out…one day…"

Hans was still a bit offended, but of course he couldn't stay mad at Miley for long.

Before they left, they agreed on going out with Luc and Christophe on Saturday evening. At home, they decided to have a lazy evening, ordered some Chinese food, watched a movie and went to bed…where it took some time though before they were actually sleeping.

On Friday, they were visiting the capital of Luxembourg (named Luxembourg-City, pretty creative) and spent some more time with Hans parents. In the evening, Miley wanted, to Hans surprise, go to the cinema again, because she was enjoying it so much to be able to just be able to do "normal" things without causing a public riot.

On Saturday evening, they met some of their friends for dinner and would visit a night club later on. Dinner was very entertaining, with lots of food, fun and also alcohol. A couple more friends would join them later that night, and it looked like the perfect start to the weekend.

When they came into the nightclub, it finally happened and someone recognized Miley. Which wasn't really much of a surprise, as a nightclub owner or manager, you were supposed to recognize most celebrities, at least the global superstars. When they found out who was visiting their establishment, they politely asked to take some pictures and then invited them into the VIP area. As the typical Luxembourgish person was rather reserved, they were not bothered, except for a couple of selfie requests which Miley was happy to grant. It didn't take long for Luc to say:

"It's somehow funny, in Miley's country, you're almost more famous, or at least more popular than her, and here in Luxembourg, it seems to be just the other way around…that's so…unpatriotic…"

"Luc?"

"Yes?"

"Are you drunk?"

"Oh hell yes"

Everybody was having a great time, and also Miley was, for the first time since she and Hans were together, drinking a bit more than she should have. But without her former girl gang, she didn't turn into this so-called Miley bitch, but she became happy, active and, much to Hans pleasure, very cuddly. She spent most of the time in the company of her new girls, but she regularly came over to the boys to get some affection from her boyfriend. Around 3am, Hans thought it was time to make use of the open air VIP area on the roof and he just pulled Miley away from her friends and dragged her with him. He guided them into a quiet corner, and his girlfriend seemed to get a bit worried:

"Is something wrong? Look, I know I drank quiet a lot, but we were having so much fun downstairs, I just didn't pay attention to how many glasses I already had…"

Hans had to smile as he answered:

"What? God, no, everything's perfect. Honestly, if you always become this affectionate from drinking alcohol, we should go out way more often. I just wanted to have you all for myself for a couple of minutes…I need some Miley time"

"Phew, and I thought I would have done something wrong" Miley said as she was hugging Hans.

"Even if you had, I couldn't stay mad at you anyway…at least not for long"

"That's good to know…" she answered with an evil grin.

15 minutes later, they went back inside to the rest of the troop, and the party went on till 5:30am before everybody made their way home. Hans was already on the way to dinner smart enough to order a cab, what turned out to be a very wise decision, as neither of them wasn't able anymore to drive a car.

Sunday was rest day, since both of them were a little banged up, and from Monday to Wednesday, they would go with Hans parents to Munich in Germany. During his time at a bank, his father spent 6 years working in the Bavarian city, and he kind of fell in love with it, so they went back there regularly. All in all, they were having a couple of relaxing days, even though they had to pay a bit more attention to where they were going, since Miley got recognized more than in Luxembourg. But compared to the US, it was still bearable, and Hans was able to show her some of the main attractions like the summer palace of the German Emperors, the Maximilian church, the Town Hall with the famous "Glockenspiel", the English Garden and a lot more. One of the highlights was having dinner in the restaurant on top of the Olympic Tower, from where you could see for miles in every direction. Since this day, there's a picture of Miley and Hans hanging on their wall of fame.

They also went to the famous shopping street, the Maximilianstrasse, to buy a dress for Miley that she could wear at the wedding, and when she tried it on, Hans thought that she looked, like always, just stunning.

Back in Luxembourg, they just wanted to relax until the wedding, but that didn't really work out. First, Miley got a phone call from her management, asking if she could perform at a concert in Manchester Sunday evening. There was a charity event being planned in honor of the victims of a bomb attack during the concert of Ariana Grande. Miley got contacted on such short notice because a couple of artists canceled their confirmation because they thought it was too risky. The young artist didn't hesitate for a second and said she would be there.

„Do you think you could join me? I know it wasn't planned, but I would be very happy if you were there"

"And finally get to see you live on stage? How could I say no to that?"

The second call was for Hans. Serge's best man, Maurice, asked if he and Miley had time to join them in the evening. They had been working on a flash mob that was planned as a surprise for the wedding, and tonight was the final rehearsal. He thought, since it was a pretty easy dance, that Miley would only need to see it 2-3 times to memorize everything, and Hans could try to shake his hips a little bit. He actually found this pretty offensive, as he thought of himself as a very capable dancer…at least when he was drunk. When he asked Miley if she was up for this, she immediately agreed, and their relaxing evening was a thing of the past.

At least, this gave Miley the opportunity to see the northern part of the country, and she was surprised about how such a small country could look so differently. You could find a lot of farms and agriculture in this part of Luxembourg, and a lot of the villages looked like coming fresh out of the 80's.

When they arrived in Hosingen, it wasn't hard to find the gym of the local school. Most people were already there, and most of them were also excited to meet Miley, just the bride of honor and the bridesmaids gave them a pretty cold welcome, which irritated Hans a little bit. But since this was the first time that he met these people, he didn't care, just like his girlfriend. Miley was just happy to get to know a few of the guests before the wedding, and with the family and friends from the groom, she hit it off right from the start.

The next two hours, everything came together like you would have expected. The whole performance lasted for about 10 minutes, and Hans and Miley stayed on the side to take a look at the first walkthrough, so they could see the different parts with their individual songs and dance moves. When the music started for the second time, they joined the others to participate actively in the choreo, and for Miley, the whole thing seemed to be ridiculously easy, since she already knew the routine perfectly after seeing it only once. One of Hans's strengths that he developed during his basketball career was an amazing footwork, but a flash mob was something completely different, and so he messed it up more than once…either he was too late, or he just couldn't remember what moves belonged to which songs. His girlfriend seemed to find this rather funny, at least she had some problems to not laugh out aloud, but after the fifth and last walkthrough, even he had memorized every part of the dance, and everything was ready for the big day.

As they were standing outside for a bit with Maurice, Claude, Yves and their respective girlfriends (next to Serge and Luc, these were his closest friends in Luxembourg, and again, Miley was surprised that Hans still counted all his friends from his youth to his inner circle, and they all had normal jobs and lives), chatting about the upcoming marriage, the bride of honor and her friends were leaving and said goodbye to everyone…well, almost everyone, they strictly ignored Miley and Hans.

"I somehow think that they don't like me…" Miley said surprised.

Maurice was the one who answered:

"Don't worry about them. I don't know if you got the same impression during the flash mob, but I'm pretty sure that Julie organized this more for herself than for Serge and Jessica. She always has to be the one that stands in the spotlight, and all of a sudden, Miley Cyrus shows up, looks at the whole choreo once and does it so much better than herself. She's just afraid that you'll be getting all the attention."

"Haha, she definitely won't have to worry about that, we're just gonna be dancing quietly in the back row. Although this 6ft6 tall dancing bear might also stand out in the last row."

"Pfff…you're just jealous of my moves. But if you want to, I can teach you some for your next music video"

"Uh, I don't think the world is ready for that…"

On their way home, they made a short stop to have dinner with their friends, and after Hans discovered their cocktail menu, it took a little longer than they had planned.

Back in the car, Hans had to ask Miley:

"Say, was I really that bad? I don't really feel like embarrassing myself on Saturday"

"What? Haha, no, honestly, I was pretty surprised, you're dancing way better than I expected. You definitely have no more excuse to refuse to go to the dance floor with me the next time we go out. Some of your moves might be a bit…adventurous, but all in all, I have to admit that you have some talent to move your body"

"So the many years of practicing my footwork and coordination paid off at last. And just for the record, it really wasn't easy to focus on the different moves"

"And why was that?"

"Come on…tight white-grey leggings, a t-shirt that barely covered half of your upper body…do you have any idea how much I had to pull myself together? The dancer next to you had the same problems by the way."

"So you're saying you liked my outfit?"

"Liked it? If you wear that at home, I'm gonna be all over you…"

Miley answered with a seductive smile:

"Oh, I'm sure I can handle that…"


	19. A complicated wedding

**A complicated wedding**

They arrived at 2pm on Saturday at the house of the happy couple from where they would walk over to the church later, which was only a few minutes away. The reception and dinner (and afterparty) would be in a restaurant only a couple of miles away from Hans penthouse. He was pretty sure that they would take it slow, especially Miley, since she would have to perform in Manchester the next day.

As they arrived in Dillingen (which was about 35 minutes from Hans' hometown), there was already a pretty nervous and chaotic atmosphere. Hans said shortly hello to the people who were already there, and also Miley finally got to meet Jessica and Serge, who was almost ecstatic to finally meet the girl who managed to capture one of his best friends in a relationship:

"It's so nice to finally meet you…and thank you so much for coming, I was already afraid I would have to pair him up with my granny, so he wouldn't be all alone"

"Yeah, I couldn't let that happen, right? But thank you so much for the invitation, I'm really happy I can be here"

After that, Jessica introduced Miley to everyone, not knowing that she already met most of these people at the flash mob rehearsal. Even Julie and her 2 followers managed to give her a fake smile, but when it came to dealing with fake people, nothing beats a lifelong experience of being in the show business.

"Oh boy, that might get interesting" Hans thought to himself.

About thirty minutes and 2 glasses of champagne later, they were heading to the little church where the marriage would take place. Due to the size of the building, only family members and the closest friends were invited, and the whole ceremony was beautiful and emotional. Even Miley was touched by the atmosphere, even though she couldn't understand a word what the priest was saying, and she held Hans' hand during the whole time. The only thing that didn't work out as planned was, ironically enough, the musical part. The father of the bride apparently paid a lot of money to book a professional singer from Germany, but as soon as she started to sing, Hans thought it somehow didn't sound right…obviously, he didn't understand crap about music and singing, but when he saw Miley's face, he knew that he was right…this professional artist was just terrible, she couldn't hit a note, the pronunciation was terrible and she even had problems with the melody of the songs.

After the ceremony was over and they headed out of the church, they were surprised (well, not really) by some members of the basketball team, who organized some silly games and sold alcohol, which was a very old tradition in Luxembourg. Miley found it pretty amusing, but she emptied her glass without any complaints. Sabrina and Luc were also there and they were, like the rest of the team, invited to the reception which was taking place in the courtyard of the restaurant they had booked. After everybody congratulated the newlyweds and Hans said hello Serge's sister, who was living in Denmark and who he hadn't seen for about 8 years now, they started to make their way to the hotel.

Upon arrival, they could see that everything was perfectly organized, the location looked amazing and the drinks and snacks were delicious. Even the weather was as good as it could be for such a day, and the guests and the couple were more than happy, when suddenly, after about 45 minutes, some people started to get excited…but not in a good way. And when Maurice, the best man, came over, he told them what happened:

"This is like the worst case. Serge and Jessica had announced that they would perform their first dance here, because the restaurant is just too small to invite everybody they wanted to, and now, the singer just left. Said she wouldn't feel well. So, either they have to cancel their first dance, or we try to play the song over their…cheap…sound system, which is completely outdated. That wouldn't definitely be how they wished it to be, but it seems to be the only possibility."

Miley looked over to Hans and said:

"Well…maybe I could jump in…"

It was Maurice who answered:

"That's really nice, but you're a guest, you really don't have to do that"

"Come on, that's like the most important dance of their life, and besides, they gave me such a warm welcome, I'd be more than happy to give something back to them"

"You really wouldn't mind?" Hans asked.

"Of course not"

Miley turned back to Maurice and asked:

"Can I pick the song?"

"If it's not Wrecking Ball…" he said with an evil grin.

"Haha, don't worry. But if the band manages to play When I look at you, that would be the most fitting song for a wedding"

"Well, I don't know the song, but I trust your choice"

"Wow, that hurt" Miley said jokingly.

"Haha, sorry. I'm gonna talk to the band and see if they think they can manage your song"

So Maurice went over to the band, and after discussing for a couple of minutes, they found the song including all the notes online, and they were sure they were able to play it. Which meant for Hans, that this would be the first time he would hear Miley live, and he had to admit that he was pretty excited about it.

Serge and Jessica were made to believe that their first dance was ruined and they would have to perform it to some romantic song coming from a box. After they finally accepted their faith and got ready, Maurice stepped on the small stage and took the mic:

"Jessica, Serge, before you start. As all of you know, our sweet couple has agreed to perform their first dance here at the reception, which is a bit unusual, but they wanted that everybody was able to see it. Unfortunately, the "professional" singer that was booked has disappeared, officially, she's not feeling well. And I know how much you were looking forward to this moment, so Jessica and Serge, to put an end to your suffering, you won't have to perform to some music out of the box, but we managed to find a replacement, one who might even be a bit better than the original singer. Jessica and Serge, dear guests, performing the song When I look at you from the movie The Last Song, Miss Miley Cyrus"

When the people finally realized that they would see a global music star instead of an overrated amateur, they started to applaud as Miley went on stage, and especially Jessica was very touched and formed a quiet thank you to Miley. The young singer gave her a smile and a sign to the band to start playing.

Performances in front of a small audience where she knew most of the people made Miley more nervous than performing in front of an anonymous crowd of 30.000 people, and she was also well aware that it would be the first time that her boyfriend saw her live on stage (even if it was a really tiny one). But like always, as soon as the music started, the anxiety was gone, and she started to sing:

" _Everybody needs inspiration  
Everybody needs a song  
A beautiful melody  
When the night's so long_

 _'Cause there is no guarantee  
That this life is easy_

 _Yeah, when my world is falling apart  
When there's no light to break up the dark  
That's when I, I  
I look at you_

 _When the waves  
Are flooding the shore and I can't  
Find my way home anymore  
That's when I, I  
I look at you_

 _When I look at you, I see forgiveness  
I see the truth  
You love me for who I am  
Like the stars hold the moon  
Right there where they belong  
And I know I'm not alone_

 _Yeah, when my world is falling apart  
When there's no light to break up the dark  
That's when I, I  
I look at you_

 _When the waves  
Are flooding the shore and I can't  
Find my way home anymore  
That's when I, I  
I look… _

_When the waves  
Are flooding the shore and I can't  
Find my way home anymore  
That's when I, I  
I look at you_

 _You appear just like a dream to me  
Just like Kaleidoscope colors that  
Cover me, all I need  
Every breath that I breathe  
Don't you know you're beautiful?_

 _Yeah, yeah, yeah_

 _When the waves  
Are flooding the shore and I can't  
Find my way home anymore  
_

 _That's when I, I  
I look at you  
I look at you_

 _You appear just like a dream  
To me"_

While the other guests were cheering and applauding, Hans was going through a whole bunch of emotions. Of course he had seen Miley on videos, heard her songs on the radio, listened to her at home, in the car, anywhere, she always found a reason to start singing, but this was just unbelievable. He still had goosebumps, and although he knew that, even among other music stars, Miley was seen as someone who has an incredible potential and talent, he only realized just now what that really meant. Miley was probably one of the best and most versatile female singers in the world. Add to this the way she looked today and how much people loved her performance, he once again had to ask himself how it was even possible that a girl like that should have fallen in love with him.

Also for the band, this would probably be an everlasting memory, and when Miley finally came over to him, he was stuttering:

"God, you're unbelievable…that song wasn't for me, and I still have goosebumps everywhere"

"So I guess one day, I have to sing for you"

"But please not in public, that might end up a bit embarrassing for me…"

"Really? Now you're making me curious…" Miley said with a mysterious smile.

Before Hans was able to reply something, Jessica and Serge came over. First, they had to endure all the well-meant congratulations from family and friends, but after that, they first wanted to thank Miley for stepping in. Especially Jessica gave her a long and warm hug:

"Thank you so much for this, you didn't only save our first day, the song was just so beautiful, we'll never forget this moment"

Also Serge, who was a pretty emotional person for a guy, gave them a hug and thanked Miley about 100 times. They were talking for a couple of minutes until the wedding photographer asked for them. When the couple left, people from the basketball team came over, and Sabrina immediately told Miley how amazing her performance was. Just like Hans, she only had seen Miley on YouTube videos or on television, but never live.

"Seriously, the next time you go on tour, I have to make it to one of your concerts"

"Well, that's the least I would expect from you. If you want, I could organize a discount for your tickets"

"Oh, that would be great if the tickets were not too expensive"

"Are you serious? Come on, as if you would have to pay anything. Maybe you could even hang out backstage with my biggest fanboy" Miley replied while smiling at Hans.

"I have no idea what she's talking about" was his reaction.

The reception lasted for another hour, pictures were taken, people talked and celebrated, and soon it was time to move to the restaurant.

The food was amazing and the organization impeccable. Miley and Hans were placed on a table with Serge's sister and her Danish husband Björn, who was happy about the fact that they weren't the only couple on the wedding that didn't communicate in Luxembourgish. The other people at the table were Yves (one of Hans' closest friends in Europe) with his German girlfriend, and a cousin of the groom. They all hit it of right away, and it didn't take long for a constant chatter in some funny Luxembourgish-English-German mix to develop. The atmosphere at this table got better and better, and Hans soon forgot about his resolutions to stay away from alcohol. Miley was doing a much better job at this, although she also didn't stay away from drinks all the time…it was still a wedding party after all.

Between the second starter and the main course, it was time to start the flash mob. Hans had some serious doubts that, given the state he was in by now (alcohol), he would be able to remember all the different moves, but in the end, he did much better than expected, in fact, he was actually pretty proud of himself. It was really fun and everybody was having a good time, only Hans' friend Serge had to take a little timeout, since he was more of an emotional guy, he didn't want to tear up in front of everybody.

Around 2am, they took some time for themselves again, and went to the outside area. They sat down on a couch, keeping some distance from the smokers who were also there, and Miley snuggled herself against her boyfriend.

Hans was unusually quiet, and after some time, he looked at Miley and said:

"Somehow, I still can't really believe what happened over the last weeks. How it's even possible that someone like you should even be slightly interested in me"

"Oh believe me, a few weeks ago, I would have never expected being so happy right now. And this week in Luxembourg, I just enjoyed it so much, and I regenerated so much from the stress in LA, I didn't even think that was possible. But what about you? Aren't you sad that we're leaving already tomorrow? You haven't only been home for 2 weeks, and if it weren't for me, you would probably spend a lot more time here."

"I would, yes. But you know what's crazy? I always considered LA and the US kind of like a temporarily period in my life and Luxembourg as my future. I mean, it will always be my homeland, but now, knowing that you're there, for the first time I don't feel like I'm just flying back to LA, but it actually feels like coming home"

Miley didn't reply, but the smile and the joy in her eyes were everything he could hope for.

Around 4am, the party came to an end and people started to leave. Miley and Hans said their goodbyes to their friends, with all the stuff waiting for them in LA (talkshows, new album, The Voice, movie projects), it might take a while before they would be able to come back to Luxembourg. But LA was a very popular holiday destination for most people, and having a billionaire and a global popstar as friends only made the city more interesting.

Hans somehow managed to bring them safely back home, where they only took a quick shower and went to bed. Their flight to Manchester would leave at 1pm and they wanted to see Hans's parents before they were leaving. At 5pm, Miley had her performance, followed by a charity diner and Monday morning they would leave Manchester again and fly over London back to LA, where Miley would start right away with the production of her new album, while Hans would start the recruiting for project Suicide Squad. All in all, it would be quite a stressful time.


	20. Manchester

**Manchester**

After they had said goodbye to Hans' parents, and after his mother promised to visit them in LA during the summer (to which Hans replied a bit offended that he had asked her for 3 years now, and she always declined because she hated flying, but immediately agreed when Miley asked), they headed to the airport. His father dropped them off, and of course, he also got a warm hug from Miley before they left. She didn't have to ask him for a visit, since he absolutely loved traveling, and probably would start looking for the best tickets right after he got back home.

They had a quiet flight to Manchester, and since they weren't in tiny Luxembourg anymore but in England, there was a Mercedes limousine picking them up at the plane. The other passengers realized with a little delay that they had two celebrities on board.

They were brought to the Marriott Hotel, where they had about two hours before they had to leave for the Old Trafford Cricket Ground, where the concert would take place. The room was pretty big and very luxurious, so that Hans already felt some regrets that they would only be able to spend a few hours in it. In order to save some time, there was a make-up artist coming to their room, as well as one of the organizers to brief Miley about the program. It looked like his girlfriend had switched into working mode, so Hans retreated himself, took a shower and a little nap in the bedroom.

Soon enough, it was time to leave for the stadium where they were immediately escorted backstage. The first thing that they noticed were the strict security measures, and the fact that barely 2 months ago on a concert that was less than a mile away, 30 young people were killed, left Hans with an oppressive feeling. On the other hand, he was very proud of Miley that she didn't hesitate for a second to participate in this charity concert.

They were guided to Miley's dressing room, and a few minutes later, it was in a complete chaos. Her hair were being done, she got her outfit, she was once more briefed on the schedule of the program and so on, and so on…

It was planned that Miley would first sing two of her own songs, Don't Stop and Inspired, after that, she would perform Happy, together with Pharell Williams and finally, together with Ariana Grande, a cover-version of Don't dream it's over. Just before it was time to get on stage, she came over to Hans:

"Hey, I'm sorry, you must feel terribly neglected, but this is just madness."

"Haha, don't worry about me, I have no problem with staying in the background and just observe everything. It's the first time that I'm backstage of such a huge concert, and I couldn't be more excited"

"Are you sure? If you prefer to go back to the hotel that's fine, even if I would love to know you'd be waiting here for me"

"Come on, I really enjoy all this, and there's no way I'm going to miss your performance. And when you come off that stage afterwards, I'll be waiting right here, give you a big hug and just tell you how amazing you are. And now, go get 'em tiger" Hans said with a smile.

"Mh, sounds perfect to me" Miley replied, gave him a quick kiss and headed to the huge stage.

When Miley was announced, she took a look around the stadium. Approximately 60.000 people made their way to the One Love concert, and she was a little amused when she noticed again that she was actually less nervous than yesterday, when she was singing on the wedding, in front of about 200 people. England was the country where, next to the US and weirdly Japan, she was the most popular, so the people were thrilled when she was announced. Miley immediately felt like home, she sang, interacted with the crowd, and just like in Washington, she was finally able, after all these years of desperation, to fully enjoy being on the big stage again, and how much she just loved the music. She realized that during these hard times, she lost this love, which used to be the most important thing in her life, and she was just happy about the turn that her life took over the last weeks.

When Ariana came out to sing together with Miley, Hans experienced once again, how talented his girlfriend really was. Ariana was considered being an amazing singer, especially when it came to the high notes. And yet, compared to Miley's voice, she sounded almost weak and powerless, also their presence on stage was completely different, as Miley was much more outgoing and interacting with the fans. It still seemed like the two of them got along really great, and the crowd sang along everytime when the chorus came up. But also Hans, who was watching from backstage, was suddenly busier than he would have thought. A lot of musicians, especially the Americans, were huge NBA fans, and so it didn't take long until the first one, Macklemore, came to Hans to ask for a selfie. He was followed by Drake, the singer from Imagine Dragons, Pharell Williams and Chris Martin from Coldplay.

When Miley came back from her performance, she had to smile when she saw Hans, happy like a child, trading selfies and autographs with the popstars. His enthusiasm of meeting people, who a lot of times, were less famous than him, was one of the things she loved about him. She observed that scene for a couple more seconds before she went over to him:

"Hey, do I have to get in line, or you got a moment for me?"

"Oh, I think I can fit you in for a second" he grinned and gave Miley a hug. "You were just amazing"

"Thanks. I'll go back to my dressing room, take a quick shower and change. Would it be ok for you if we went back to the hotel for an hour or two before we head out for the dinner?"

"Of course it is. I'll come to you room in a few minutes and wait for you. I just have to collect a few more signatures…"

"Haha, you're just unbelievable" Miley had to smile and gave him a kiss.

"Why unbelievable?"

„Just because…"

For a moment, it looked like Hans wanted to reply something, when he suddenly became extremely nervous and shouted out:

"Oh my God, that's Liam Gallagher from Oasis. Look, I'll be right in your dressing room, but I MUST get this autograph." He quickly kissed Miley on the front and took off. The young singer smiled as she was lightly shaking her head and left for her dressing room.

When she came out of the bathroom, no more make-up, showered and changed, she was surprised that Hans was actually sitting on the couch, checking his new treasures. Apparently, he fought his way through to a souvenir stand, bought a One Love t-shirt and let everybody sign it who didn't get out of his way quick enough. He had the signatures of The Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay, Justin Timberlake, Liam Gallagher, Adele, Jessy J and a few more, next to a few more selfies.

"I see, someone's been quite successful"

"Haha, I somehow feel like a child again, collecting Panini stickers for the football championships"

"What stickers?"

Hans looked at her with disgust:

"My God, you Americans are just so clueless. You could collect these stickers for every European or World Championships. But back to the things that really matter, the most important signature is still missing on my shirt. I even kept you the best spot"

"Jesus, you really made everybody sign who got in your way"

"Great, isn't it?"

To see how proud he was of himself made her smile and just realize how much she loved this guy. She signed the t-shirt for him and said:

"What have I done to deserve you?"

"Oh, that's a very long list…"

A little bit later, a driver brought them back to their hotel where they were able to rest for a bit. What Hans didn't like about this dinner was the fact that the men were required to wear a smoking. He never felt too comfortable when he had to dress up formally.

After he was changed and waited for Miley, he checked a couple of internet sites. It only took him a few minutes to find out that Perez Hilton had published a new entry in his blog. And it seemed like he still wasn't gonna let this thing go, but this time time, Miley wasn't the only one who got attacked:

" _My dear fans, I'm sure you've all noticed by now that I, some time ago, got viciously attacked by so-called celebrities, because I had the audacity to tell the truth about two of their kind. Yes, I'm talking about Miley Cyrus and Jerome Hansen. By now, I have received some top secret information, that might explain why they keep this fake happy relationship upright. Miley just started to work on a new album, and we all know, changing your image and starting a new relationship is the best way to make sure you're gonna get a lot of attention from press and media. Jerome Hansen, on the other hand, is about to start a new movie project, with none other than his good buddy Will Smith playing the main part. Which would also explain why I got so relentlessly attacked by the whole Smith family._

 _But here's a small bite of reality for this wannabe lovebirds:_

 _Miley can publish as many pictures as she wants on Instagram, we all know the durability of her relationships. My dear Jerome, or Hans, if you really expect being more than a small distraction for the summer time, you better prepare yourself for a rude awakening. Till now, none of her relationships lasted for more than a couple of months, and I really can't blame Liam for throwing himself into the arms of 2 strippers. You know how they say: Once a hoe, always a hoe. Besides, don't you think that people are aware of this comedy? One of the richest people on this planet, doesn't date a model, actress or popstar from the caliber of Taylor Swift or Katy Perry? No, he's supposed to have fallen in love with this little, ugly, weed smoking bitch…nobody actually believes that. And now to you, Hans, two things. First of all, fire your management and hire a new one, because your actual one seems to be completely incompetent if they advised you to participate in this charade. Secondly, with your homophobic statements towards me, you finally revealed your true character. You showed the whole world that you're not the nice person that you always want to present yourself as in public, but, to use your own words, a goddamn asshole._

 _So, after dedicating these two irrelevant B-celebrities more time than they deserved, let me come to my conclusion: Miley and Hans, keep on pretending to be this happy couple, nobody believes you anyway. My prediction is very simple…as soon as Miley's new album will be published, this will go down as yet another unhappy romance in Hollywood's glorious history."_

Well, that was pretty awful…Miley, once again, a filthy whore, while he was a homophobic asshole. No matter what his friends and family would advise him on this one, there would be a reaction to this article.

When Miley came out of the bathroom, Hans was still sitting there, eyes on his smartphone and shaking his head. This was rather untypical for him, so she asked him:

"Bad news?"

"Oh hey, I didn't hear you. Well, kind of, I'll show you in the car, we have to leave if we want to make it on time"

On the way to the charity dinner, Miley read the article, which had already triggered a lot of reactions. Once again, the hashtag #MileyBitch was used, but there were also a lot of people defending the couple and saying that their relationship was none of Perez Hilton's business.

Miley though seemed to be really affected by this article. When Hans looked at her to see her reaction, he could see that she was trying to hold back her tears.

"Are you ok?"

"Not really. I'm so sorry that you got dragged into this and now getting attacked on a personal level. I'm just afraid that all this stress and hostilities will be too much and that you gonna realize at one point, that life would be much easier without me"

Hans smiled at her:

"Well, easier…definitely."

But he saw how much he suffered, so he unbuckled her seatbelt and took her into his arms:

"Listen, I told you before and I'm gonna tell you one last time. You're the most wonderful person I have ever met in my life, I love you just the way you are and there's not anything I would change about you, because to me, you're just perfect. And seriously, why should I care about these web blogs from some internet joke? My friends and family know me, you know me, and that's the only thing that counts for me. And every punch I can take is a good one, because it doesn't hit you. Come on, I was willing to start a fight with Shaquille O'Neal, do you really think I would be scared of Perez Hilton?"

"Are you serious? You started a fight with Shaq?"

"Haha, you see, there are for more interesting subjects than this stupid article. And, let's say, it was mainly just for the show, I was quite sure that the referees would jump in before we could get into it"

"So how did it end?"

"Uh, if I recall correctly, I somehow ended up next to the spectators in the third row before the refs finally arrived"

„So, there might be some hope after all, if you survived a physical fight with Shaq"

"Haha…oh, Miley, even if this sounds very cheesy now, but you are the love of my life. Let the people think whatever they want, the only thing I care about is for you to be happy. And if everything is getting out of hand and you can't take it anymore, we'll just disappear to Luxembourg for a few weeks. Besides, this is just a handful of idiots…think about Washington, Manchester today, or the last days that we spent in LA, most people let you back into their hearts. And now smile and enjoy the evening, we'll deal with Perez Hilton once we get back home"

"You know, I sometimes ask myself what place I would be in right now if I hadn't met you". Miley sighed as she closed her eyes and just enjoyed this feeling of security that her boyfriend provided her.

A few minutes later, they arrived at the Theatre of Manchester, where the charity dinner took place. Miley had pulled herself together, and so they left the car and made their way over the red carpet. Once again, they were the center of attention, countless pictures were taken of them, together as a couple, but also some pictures of Miley alone, and a couple of journalists tried to get a few statements on various things. Mainly, the questions were about the concert or what they thought of Manchester as a city, one journalist even asked Hans if he would favor Manchester United or Manchester City. He probably didn't make a lot of friends when he replied that he didn't care at all, since he was a huge Liverpool fan. There was just one journalist from the Sun, the English version of the Hollywood Reporter, who had to ask about Perez Hilton and his blog. Hans didn't really feel like answering this question, so he all he said was:

"Well, what can I say? Much to Mr Hilton's disappointment, we are as happy as we can be, and that won't change anytime soon. Considering the personal attacks, I don't know why he seems to dislike us that much, my guess is that he's simply trying to gain as much attention as possible for his blog. And before you keep asking, that's all I have to say about this."

After they had left the red carpet and talked to a couple of Miley's colleagues from the Showbiz, one of the waiters lead them to their table. The seating order was organized in a system that every table had 4 donors and 4 celebrities. As soon as Miley discovered that they were seated next to Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish, she got extremely excited. Elton John was one of her big idols, especially since he wrote a good part of the soundtrack from the Lion King. Hans on the other side got pretty nervous when he saw the name of two of their other table partners. Prince Harry of Wales and his wife, Meghan Markle. He didn't recognize any of the last two names, so he guessed that they were probably friends with the Royal couple, since he couldn't imagine that the organizers would just put two strangers on the same table. They were the first to arrive, so they took their seats and waited anxiously. A couple of minutes later, Elton John and David Furnish showed up. Hans never saw Miley blushing like that, even though she was wearing make-up, her cheeks turned red like a tomato. His problem was rather that he had no idea on how to greet them…with a formal handshake like usual, a kiss on the cheek…in this case, Miley had the easier job. Sir Elton though was making it easy for him and took the initiative with a friendly hug…which looked kind of funny, considering the difference in height between these two. When they finally sat down, Miley immediately started to talk:

"God, I'm so excited, you're one of my biggest idol. I really have no idea what to say now…maybe thank you for your amazing tweet, that was a huge and pleasant surprise at the time"

"You don't have to thank me for that. Like I said, I have a certain weakness for rebellious people, since I made my own experiences when it comes to making unpopular decisions. I also have followed your career, and I just love your art. And from now on, for both of you, just call us Elton and David, otherwise you're making us feel even older than we already really are"

They kept talking for a few minutes about their stay in Manchester and the concert, when they noticed that everybody got very excited. Prince Harry and his wife had just entered the room. After greeting a couple of people, they finally found their way to their table. Sir Elton John knew Harry since his childhood, and the whole world knew about his friendship to the Royals since he performed "Candle in the Wind" at Princess Diana's funeral. After these two old friends chatted for a few moments, the Prince and his wife finally turned their attention to their other guests:

"And you are also at our table? When Meghan saw the guest list, I had to promise that I would try everything to get seated at your table"

Hans started to smile and asked:

"I see…Hannah Montana or Miley Cyrus fan?"

"Honestly, growing up in Orlando, I'm a magic fan since I was a little child. Let's just say, after Shaq and Penny had left, life wasn't the same anymore until you showed up. At least, you saved me from a lot of stupid jokes from my fellow actors" replied Meghan.

"Well, I'm always happy to help"

When it came to the last two people at the table, Hans was right with his initial guess, it was a former school mate of Prince Harry. It went on to become a pretty entertaining evening, even though Miley and Hans felt a bit overwhelmed by the celebrity factor of their dinner partners, but it didn't take long for them to feel at ease. Prince Harry was a pleasant entertainer, and Hans could see why the media loved to call him the Party Prince. He was a real wine connoisseur and as soon as he found out that Hans was a Whiskey fan, he immediately made sure that they would be served a bottle with the dessert. So when the chocolate cake was finally on the table, the men sat together with a glass of Whiskey, while the women (together with Elton's husband David) decided to get something sweeter (Limoncello). The other couple had already left, since they were supposed to be back in London very early in the morning. What's more, Harry seemed to be surprisingly well informed about everything that happened to Miley and Hans over the last weeks, and he finally had to satisfy his curiosity:

"So what about this blog from that Perez Hilton? I mean, you probably have to do something about the last one?"

"Honestly, I have no idea. I think I'll handle that spontaneously if I should happen to run into him one day. If I say something about him in public, he's gonna call me, pardon the word, a homophobic asshole again. Oh well, if Miley's father gets to him first, I won't have to worry about him anyway"

"This fucking faggot discredits every single one of us with his outrageous behavior!"

"Fucking faggot? Wow, just imagine I would say that to him" Hans said laughingly.

"I'm old and gay, I have a right to call him that"

The legendary musician said this with such a tipsy voice that the other two just burst out in laughter and the women (and David) looked over surprised, not knowing what had causing this sudden erupt. In the end, they had a very nice evening, Elton John was really impressed by Miley and said that they definitely would have to work together somewhen in the near future. Just like Ellen, he appreciated how much she had done helping to fight for the LBGT community to gain equal rights, and he didn't lie when he said that he had followed her career closely, because in his opinion, she had one of the most versatile voices in the music industry. Hans on the other hand, got along very well with Prince Harry, they were chatting a lot about the Prince's time in the army and Hans' career as a professional athlete, and of course, before the end of the charity event, he got everybody to sign on a napkin and take some pictures with him.

They arrived back in the hotel around 4 am and both of them were completely exhausted. They would be able to get about 5 hours of sleep before they had to leave for the airport and fly back to Los Angeles. After they took a shower, they were talking for a couple of minutes in bed. Especially Miley had, even though it was pretty stressful, enjoyed the day:

"What a day. The flight, the performance, dinner…it's actually pretty funny that the Princess of England is a fan of yours…do I have to be jealous now?"

"Oh come on…she grew up in Orlando, she basically had no other choice. Did I already tell you how amazing you were?"

„Only about six times…at least. But you can say it one more time, I don't mind" Miley smiled.

"Haha, alright. You're amazing" he said once again, and gave Miley a kiss, who said:

"But do you know the best thing about today? Just knowing that there's someone waiting for me when I get off stage, or just be there for me if I needed something. Till now, I always had my manager and assistants, well, and my father in the first years, but this was something completely different. It was just nice knowing all the time that you were there"

"I'm glad to hear that" Hans replied as he was dozing off.


End file.
